is is why you were so anxious to come here," she said, very low; yet
everyone heard her statement. "To dig around, and then, if you found oil,
to try to buy this place! Oh, I thought better of you than that, Morgan!
What a trick--what a dishonorable trick!" She shuddered away from him. She
almost hated him in this revealing moment.

"And why not?" was all her husband said. "Hadn't I a right to look for oil
here? Suppose it was on the place?"

"You wouldn't have told him if you had found it! You know you wouldn't,"
his wife shot back at him.

Pell glared at her, fury in the look. "What do you think I am? Crazy?" he
argued.

"But that isn't honest!" Lucia fearlessly said. "It's as crooked as it can
be! And you know it."

"But it's legal!" Pell fired back. "And what do I care--what does anybody
care--so long as it's legal! Ha! the courts would be with me! Moreover,
it's the way you get the clothes you wear and the food you eat, and all
those jewels that you hang on yourself when you undress and go to the
opera!"

As he spoke, angrily, he went over to the chair where Gilbert had left the
satchel, seized it and threw it on the floor, as though its contents were a
symbol of the money she tossed away.

There was no use replying to a man like Pell. Lucia knew that. He was
indignant that she had seen through his treachery. Here he was, a guest of
Gilbert Jones, eating at his table day after day, pretending to be his
friend, and all the while he had been planning this! And she had seemed to
be a part of it all. What must Gilbert think of her? What must everybody
think of her?

It was Hardy who broke the tension.

"Say," he wanted to know, "who's this woman, and what's she busting into
this for? We've had enough of petticoats around here for one day, it seems
to me."

Uncle Henry was swift to inform him. "I'll tell you who she is--she's his
wife!" And he pointed to Pell. "But she loves _him_!" And he pointed to
Gilbert.

It was as though a bomb had exploded. Terror came into Gilbert's eyes, and
fury into Morgan Pell's.

"What's that?" the latter cried, aghast. As a madman might, he stared at
Gilbert for an instant; then his gaze shot in the direction of his wife,
standing so calm at the other side of the table.

Young Jones almost made up his mind, in that blinding moment, to choke
Uncle Henry once for all, and have it done with. This was the last stroke,
the final straw. He could stand it no longer. He stalked ov