“Very well, now please listen carefully, and I’m sure you’ll understand.... At this moment I own the _Free Press_. Until your chattel mortgage falls due--and that is two months away--I shall continue to own it.... During that time I shall edit it as I see fit. I think that is clear.... I shall ask no advice from you. I shall take no dictation from you. What I believe should be printed, I shall print.... Good afternoon, Mr. Fownes.” She brushed past him and walked rapidly toward the office; Mr. Fownes stood for a moment frowning; then he turned his round head upon his shoulders--apparently there was no neck to assist in the process--and stared after her. It was not an angry stare, nor a threatening stare. Rather it was appraising. If Carmel could have studied his face, and especially his eyes, at that moment, she would have wondered if he were so fatuous as she supposed. She might even have asked herself if he were really, as certain people in Gibeon maintained, nothing but a bumptious figurehead, used by stronger men who worked in his shadow.... There was something in Abner Fownes’s eyes which was quite worthy of remark; but perhaps the matter most worthy of consideration was that he manifested no anger whatever--as a vain man, a little man, bearded as he had been by a mere girl, might have done.... He peered after her briefly, then, by a series of maneuvers, set his face again in the direction he had been traveling, and proceeded magnificently on his way.... Carmel would have been more disturbed, and differently disturbed, could she have seen into the man’s mind and read what was passing in its depths. His thoughts had not so much to do with Carmel as an editor as with Carmel as a woman. CHAPTER VII Carmel entered the office of the _Free Press_, after her encounter with Abner Fownes, in a temper which her most lenient friend could not describe as amiable. It was no small part of Carmel’s charm that she could be unamiable interestingly. Her tempers were not set pieces, like the Niagara Falls display at a fireworks celebration. They did not glow and pour and smoke until the spectators were tired of them and wanted to see something else. Rather they were like gorgeous aërial bombs which rent the remote clouds with a detonation and lighted the heavens with a multitude of colored stars. Sometimes her choicest tempers were like those progressive bombs which keep on detonating a half a dozen times and illuminating with different colored stars after each explosion. This particular temper was one of her best.