"With Tony? No; he was with Barber, the most evil scoundrel, the—the—well, that woman's husband;" and he broke off as he swung round again towards Mrs. Dickson. "The man she married and left for another fool, who——"
"Don't!" the blind woman exclaimed. "Don't speak of him. Blame me—blame even Willy, but not him. I loved him."
Slaughter laughed in his mirthless, satirical manner again.
"Till yet another came," he said. "Till you met Dickson, and——"
"He was Dickson," she interrupted. "It was the name he took. It was——"
"And you profane his memory by saying that he was the father of that cowardly slab?" Slaughter broke in angrily.
"He was the father of my boy. It was why I named him Willy. It is why he is all my world, ever since his father was taken from me."
"Miss," Slaughter exclaimed, turning to Ailleen again, "it makes me mad to hear her. She lied of me as she now lies of him, who was my dearest friend in the old days, the man she led to ruin with the witchery of her face. It makes me mad, I say," he went on, his voice rising under the growing fury of his anger. "She wronged me bad enough, but——"
With a sudden access of the frenzy which had seized him when he met Barber at the Three-mile, he swung round upon the blind woman as she sat trembling in her chair, with his fists clenched and the evil light of mania in his eyes. Ailleen, seeing the look and the gesture, sprang at him and seized his arm.
"Stop!" she cried. "Would you strike a helpless woman like that?"