e.

"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.

After a moment she broke out hysterically:

"It's not true! I won't believe it! You're all against me, all of you!
His name is Nicholas Forrester! I tell you his name is Nicholas
Forrester!" She broke into violent sobbing.

Mr. Shawyer looked greatly distressed.

"No doubt it is all a misapprehension," he said. "There is some mistake
in the name. It is not such a very uncommon name," he suggested. But he
knew that it was.

"There is no mistake," Faith's mother insisted flintily. "If my daughter
has married that man I will never forgive her to my dying day."

"Mother!" The word came from Faith in a heart-broken cry, and once more
Mr. Shawyer rushed gallantly into the breach.

"It is very unjust to my client to take this premature view," he said
reprovingly. "Naturally, I know nothing of the circumstances of which
you are now speaking, and we can only wait until Mr. Forrester comes
home before they are proved or disproved. I speak of him as I have
always found him, and I can truthfully say that your daughter will be
perfectly safe and happy with him."

But for all notice Mrs. Ledley took he might have spared himself the
trouble of speech. Disappointment and sorrow had hardened her, and she
could see nothing beyond the fact that her own child had married the man
whom she herself most hated in all the world.

Almost before Mr. Shawyer had finished speaking she rose and took up her
shabby little handbag.

"There is nothing more we need stay for," she said harshly. "Faith, dry
your eyes and come home."

But Faith could only sob on in t