While Chaffin was formulating these suggestions Landri looked at him in such a way that the other had to avert his eyes. For the first time the former pupil of the dishonest steward asked himself this question: "Is this really the same man?" In the flare of a sudden intuition he caught a glimpse of the dangerous plot woven about the ancient estate, one of the artisans of which was this man who advised him—to do what? To commit moral parricide, in view of M. de Claviers' character. But it was only a gleam. This cruel advice might, after all, have been suggested to the steward, at his wits' end, by the desperation born of one of those crises in affairs in which humanity vanishes before the implacability of figures. However that might be, Landri had been wounded too deeply in his instinctive
