"Has it gone off yet?" she naïvely asked.
"Has what gone off?" from Pell.
"Why, the gun, of course!" Angela replied.
"Gun?"
She looked at "Red." "He had one, and I thought maybe he'd shoot you, or maybe you'd shoot Gilbert, or maybe—Aren't you going to shoot him?"
"What for?"
"I thought that was what husbands always did!"
Pell smiled. "Not sensible husbands, my dear." Then he faced Gilbert again. "To go back to where we were: I will admit that there is a possibility of oil in this property. But it is only a possibility." The strain was broken. Everyone looked relieved. Lucia moved for the first time—she had been like a frightened bird under the spell of a serpent. "I'm a business man," Pell went on, suavely. "I'm willing to gamble twenty thousand dollars."
"You will?" cried Uncle Henry. There was no quieting him. His life was one long question-mark.
"It's a fair proposition, and, as far as I can see, your only way out, Jones." He had paid no attention to the old man's interruption. But the latter broke in once more: