“Young woman, you are impertinent,” he said, drawing his shoulders upward and his neck inward very much like a corpulent turtle in a state of exasperation. He was laughable. Carmel smiled and he saw the derision in her eyes. It must have been maddening to a man accustomed for years to deference and to adulation--maddening and not to be understood. “I have warned you,” he said. “My patience nears the breaking point.” “And then?” Carmel asked. For the first time she saw the man, the real Abner Fownes. Lines, cultivated by years of play-acting in a character part, disappeared from his face. His chins seemed to decrease in number; his cheeks to become less pudgy; his eyes less staring and fatuous. His jaw showed strong and ruthless; his eyes turned cold and deadly and intelligent. She saw in him a man capable of planning, of directing, of commanding other men--a man who would pause before no obstacle, a man whose absurd body was but a convenient disguise for a powerful, sinister personality. He was no longer ridiculous; he was dangerous, impressive. “Miss Lee,” he said, “for reasons of your own you have gone out of your way to antagonize me.... I was attracted to you. I would have been your friend. I credited you with brains and ability. I would even have made you Mrs. Fownes.... You would have been a credit to me as my wife--I believed. But you are not intelligent. You are very foolish.” There was no threat, no rancor. There was even a certain courtesy and dignity in his manner, but it frightened her more than rage and bluster could have done. It was the manner of one who has made up his mind. His eyes held her eyes, and a feeling of helplessness spread over her like some damp, cold wrapping. “If you do not return to Gibeon,” he said, “I will forget your antagonism.” “What are you saying?” “Your presence in Gibeon has become an annoyance. If you do not return--it will be wise.” “Not return!... To Gibeon, and to the _Free Press_! You are absurd.” “In a few days there will be no _Free Press_,” he said. “There will be a _Free Press_ in Gibeon,” she answered, “long after the bankruptcy courts have settled the affairs of Abner Fownes.” As she spoke she knew she had been again the victim of impulse; she had betrayed knowledge which she should not have betrayed. Fownes was expressionless, but his eyes glowed like sun upon sullied ice. “I have no more to say to you,” he said, and there was a finality in his words which conveyed more than the sense of the words themselves. It was as if he had spoken a death sentence. He turned to the door and walked away from her with that pompous waddle which was not so absurd when one realized how invaluable it was to the man and how painstakingly he must have cultivated it.... A servant peered into the alcove and entered with a yellow envelope in his hand. “Mr. Fownes?” he said. “Yes.” “A telegram, sir. The Governor said he saw you come in here, sir.”