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 was no escape for Lucia. God! what he had gotten her in for! He cursed the tongue of Uncle Henry, and mentally he heaped maledictions on his own head for his gross stupidity. So this was how the land lay—this was the path that led to his destruction—ah! not only his, but hers! Angry as he was, he knew it would be futile to do anything but try, even now, to placate this wretched specimen of a man. He had to think quickly. There was not an instant to lose.