For a moment or two Joyce was utterly cowed! then the devil in him reared its head again, and he hissed,
“You clear out of here, and remember this; if I have to keep sober for a year to do it, I’ll ruin you, Tom Hammond, I will!”
He laughed with an almost demoniacal glee, as he went on:
“I can write a par yet, you know. I’ll dip my pen in the acid of hate—hate, the hate of devils, my beauty—and then get Fletcher to put them into his paper. He’s not in love with the ‘Courier,’ or with Tom Hammond, the Editor.”
“You scurrilous wretch!” It was all that Hammond deigned to reply.
“Good day, Mrs. Joyce!” he bowed to the white-faced woman.
For her sake he did not offer to shake hands, but moved away down the stairs.
He caught a hansom a few moments after leaving the mean street. He had purposed, when he started out that morning, to hunt up his other correspondent, the Jew, Abraham Cohen. But after the scene he had just witnessed, he felt quite unwilling to interview a stranger.
“I wish,” he mused, as he sat back in the hansom, “I had not gone near that poor soul. I am afraid my visit may make it awkward for her.”