He broke off. Mrs. Ledley had risen to her feet. She was as white as death, and her eyes were like fire as she took a step forward and leaned heavily against the paper-strewn table.
"Scammel!" she said hoarsely. "Ralph Scammel! Is that the man my daughter has married?"
"It is merely an assumed name," Mr. Shawyer said quickly. "For business purposes." Mrs. Ledley was breathing fast. It was with difficulty that she at length found her voice.
"Ralph Scammel is the man who ruined my husband," she said.
Faith had hardly spoken during the whole interview, but now she started up from her chair with a little stifled cry.
Ever since her father's death, though she had never heard the name of the man who had brought about his ruin, she had been encouraged always to think of him with hatred.
Even the twins, in their play, frightened each other with an imaginary bogey of him, whom they called for want of a better name "The Bad Man," and sometimes Mrs. Ledley herself, tired and worried to death, would quiet them and force them to settle down to sleep by telling them that unless they did the "bad man" would come and carry them away.
And now Faith had married him!
She was still child enough to feel a nameless fear of the imaginary bogey, as well as suffocating shame and dread of the thing she had unwittingly done.