How could he doubt, from this moment, that she was the accomplice employed by the people who were working the Mornington affair and trying to get rid of him?  Had he not every right to suppose that she was directing the sinister gang, and that, commanding the others with her audacity and her intelligence, she was leading them toward the obscure goal at which they were aiming?

For, after all, she was free, entirely free in her actions and movements.  The windows opening on the Place du Palais-Bourbon gave her every facility for leaving the house under cover of the darkness and coming in again unknown to anybody.

It was therefore quite possible that, on the night of the double crime, she was among the murderers of Hippolyte Fauville and his son.  It was quite possible that she had taken part in the murders, and even that the poison had been injected into the victims by her hand, by that little, white, slender hand which he saw resting against the golden hair.

A shudder passed through him.  He had softly put back the paper in the book, restored the book in its place, and moved nearer to the girl.

All of a sudden, he caught himself studying the lower part of her face, the shape of her jaw!  Yes, that was what he was making every effort to guess, under the curve of the cheeks and behind the veil of the lips.  Almost against his will, with personal anguish mingled with torturing curiosity, he stared and stared, ready to force open those closed lips and to seek the reply to the terrifying problem that suggested itself to him.

Those teeth, those teeth which he did not see, were not they the teeth that had left the incriminating marks in the fruit?  Which were the teeth of the tiger, the teeth of the wild beast:  these, or the other woman’s?

It was an absurd supposition, because the marks had been recognized as made by Marie Fauville.  But was the absurdity of a supposition a sufficient reason for discarding it?

Himself astonished at the feelings that agitated him, fearing lest he should betray himself, he preferred to cut short the interview and, going up to the girl, he said to her, in an imperious and aggressive tone: 

“I wish all the servants in the house to be discharged.  You will give them their wages, pay them such compensation as they ask for, and see that they leave to-day, definitely.  Another staff of servants will arrive this evening.  You will be here to receive them.”

She made no reply.  He went away, taking with him the uncomfortable impression that had lately marked his relations with Florence.  The atmosphere between them always remained heavy and oppressive.  Their words never seemed to express the private thoughts of either of them; and their actions did not correspond with the words spoken.  Did not the circumstances logically demand the immediate dismissal of Florence Levasseur as well?  Yet Don Luis did not so much as think of it.