Uncle Henry, seeing that he was safe, came back to the fray.
"Well, you _couldn't_ marry her," indicating Lucia, "an' you _wouldn't_
marry _her_," pointing to Angela. "I guess I got some right to protect
myself, ain't I?"
"Protect yourself!" repeated Gilbert, cynicism in his tone. He turned his
back on them all and moved to the window. His very shoulders revealed the
mental struggle he was going through.
Morgan Pell's eyes, all this time, had never left his wife. He studied her
countenance as a pathologist might that of a person thought to be insane,
and Lucia almost gave way under his relentless analysis. "Red," seeing the
turn affairs had taken, quietly drew his gun, and Angela, frightened, put
her hands over her shell-like ears. If there was one thing she dreaded, it
was a shot. She was trembling like a leaf. She closed her eyes. She knew
that "Red," in his devotion to Gilbert, would not hesitate to kill Pell.
With an inscrutable expression, Morgan Pell murmured, "H'm!" Then he turned
swiftly on Uncle Henry and asked, "You have proof, I suppose?"
"Proof?" cried Uncle Henry.
"Yes."
"My Gawd," the invalid fairly shrieked, "all you gotter do is look at 'em!
I been watchin' 'em ever since you came.
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