"Monsieur le Marquis, being obliged to leave for Grandchamp, instructs me to say to Monsieur le Comte, in reply to his letter, that he will expect him at Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré to-morrow. GARNIER." That M. de Claviers had not put aside his severity, this missive, so deliberately impersonal and at such a time, was a sufficient proof. "However, he is willing to see me!" said Landri to himself. "This interview will be another very painful one, but I must not shirk it." Upon receipt of the despatch he had devoted all the energy of his mind to looking at the impending meeting from the point of view that he had constantly maintained during that month of almost absolute solitude. He had passed the whole of it in trying to define his duty, and he had always come at last to the twofold necessity: silence and separation, separation and silence. During those interminable hours of reflection he had not had one moment's doubt. Not for a moment, either, had he ceased to suffer at the thought of Jaubourg's will, of the shocking abuse of confidence committed for his benefit by his real father, and in which he could not avoid being an accomplice, rather than commit a still more shocking crime by breaking the heart of the most loyal of men, by dishonoring his own mother. His grief finally took the shape of remorse for his compulsory participation in this vilest of falsehoods. Every time that he had remembered, during those four weeks, the petrifying revelation, he had thought instantly of the method resorted to by the dead man to leave him his fortune, and had shuddered with impotent abhorrence.