"Devil take the artificial face," said he. "Eating with it is impossible. Put it in that corner, and give it to me when I go out."
"As you please, doctor," said Matteus, with a terrified air. "I wash my hands of it. Your lordship is aware that every evening I am required to give an account of all that passes here. It will be in vain for me to say your mask fell off by mistake, for I cannot deny that madame saw what was beneath it."
"Very well, my fine fellow," said the doctor, without being disconcerted, "make your report."
"And you will remark, Master Matteus," said Consuelo, "that I did not in any manner provoke the doctor to this disobedience, and that it is not my fault that I have seen him."
"Be calm, countess," said Supperville, with a full mouth. "The prince is not so black as he seems, and I am not afraid of him. I will say, that since he authorised me to sup with you, he permitted me to remove every obstacle to mastication and deglutition. Besides, I have the honor to be too well known to you, for my voice not to have betrayed me long ago. I therefore divest myself of a vain form which the prince, at the very outset, will be glad of."
"Very well, doctor," said Matteus. "I am glad that you, and not I committed this act." The doctor shrugged his shoulders, laughed at the timid old man, and when Matteus had retired, to change the service, drew his chair a little closer, and said in a low tone to Consuelo:
"Dear signora, I am not such a gourmand as I seem," (Supperville, being considerably filled, spoke somewhat at his ease,) "and my object, when I came to sup with you, was to inform you of matters which concern you greatly."
"Whence, and by whose authority do you seek to speak thus to me?" said Consuelo, who remembered her promise to the Invisibles.
"On my own account, and to please myself," replied Supperville; "do not then be uneasy. I am no spy, and speak, careless who may repeat the words that come from my heart."
For a moment, Consuelo thought it was her duty to make the doctor be silent, and be no accomplice of his treason, but she fancied that a man sufficiently devoted to the Invisibles to undertake to half poison people, to secrete them in out-of-the-way castles, would not act as he did without authority. "This is a snare set for me," said she to herself. "The ordeal begins. Let me watch the attack."