Something seemed to choke her, and make it
impossible for her to continue.

Her husband looked at her in amazement. She turned away, and was silent.

"Thank you," said Pell to Gilbert. Then, to his wife he said: "And now that
this is settled, we shall proceed to other business of even more
importance. This gentle soul," looking at Uncle Henry, "has said that our
friend loves you and that you love him. Is it true?" He was perfectly calm.

Once more he was the crafty, cruel, scheming man; and back into his eyes
came that glitter she so feared.

Gilbert, astonished, got to the other side of the table.

"I thought we were through with all that!" he said. "What's the use of
harping on it?"

"You were wrong," answered Pell, coldly. "I am a business man, as I told
you before. I do one thing at a time." His lids half closed, his hands
clenched. He swerved abruptly on his wife. "Well?" he said. "Well?"

"You mean to say," said Gilbert, "that you took seriously what my doddering
old uncle said? I told you I thought he was crazy, and you seemed to agree
with me. What are you talking about now?"

Morgan Pell's steel-gray eyes fastened themselves on Jones, "I am talking
to my wife. I am not ready for you--yet. One thing at a time, you know."
He looked again at Lucia. "Well? I am waiting. Answer me: Do you love him?"

Alarm at Pell's manner was rife in the room. What a brute he was, and how
terrible was his verbal attack!

Lucia could not trust herself to speak. She knew she would have to reply to
her husband's question, and though she knew her answer would be but a
monosyllable, she could not get it out.

"Well?" Pell repeated, and the word was like a hammer-blow.

"No!" Lucia managed to say.

The husband now turned on Gilbert. "Do _you_ love _her_?" he asked with
great deliberation, as though he had rehearsed it in his mind for days.

"Certainly not," was the immediate reply.

The silence that followed could have been cut with a knife. Everyone stood
as though turned to stone. Surely this denial would be enough. Pell did not
move. A menacing expression came over his face. As though there were no one
else in the world, he glanced first at his wife and then at Jones, and
affirmed with quiet deliberation:

"You're a couple of rotten liars!"

Had he been struck in the face, Gilbert could not have been angrier. He saw
it all now--he was in this man's power, utterly. It had been planned
craftily, smoothly. And there wa