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. "But you said you didn't believe ..." he began; but Pell came mercilessly back at him! "I didn't--then. The time was inopportune." Uncle Henry clutched the arms of his chair. "Ooooooh! The dirty bum!" he yelled. Pell went on, inexorably. "But now that she herself has admitted it, and--" "Admitted it!" Gilbert cried, his rage now at the boiling point. "Yes! By everything she has said and done to-day. My dear fellow," with a subtle change of tone, "God knows I am no prude." He smiled a bland smile. "But there are limits to what any husband can endure." His lips became thin and terrible; his eyes were gleaming slits. Gilbert was aghast. He saw no solution of this painful situation; no safety for Lucia--his thoughts were all of Lucia. "You don't think that!" he said, "You couldn't possibly think that! Oh, my God!" Morgan Pell sneered at him. "I know what I would have done, in your place and with your opportunities." Gilbert found it hard to realize that any husband could say a thing like this in the presence of his wife. It revealed, if anything further were needed to reveal, the cur in the man. "We're not all as rotten as you are, Pell! Don't forget that!" he cried. "You're a dog--a low-down dog." It was all he could do not to spring upon this craven and pin him to the floor.