"Do you feel yourself strong enough to be present at an important interview?"
"Is it necessary that I should be present?"
"I think it quite right that you should hear the communications that one of my emissaries is about to make me."
"It is very imprudent of you," said Don Tadeo, "to receive such a man in your own house!"
"Oh! do not alarm yourself! I have known him for a long time. Besides, he is not aware whose house he is in; he was brought hither blinded, by two of our brethren. In addition to which, we shall be masked."
"Well! since you desire it, I am at your commands."
The two friends, after having covered their faces with black velvet masks, entered the apartment in which were the persons who waited for them. This apartment, which served as a dining room, was very large, and furnished with a long table; it was faintly illumined by two sconces, in which burned small candles of yellow tallow, yielding so doubtful a light that objects could be seen but indistinctly. Three men, wrapped in variegated ponchos, and with broad-brimmed hats pulled down over their eyes, were carelessly smoking their slender papelitos, whilst warming themselves round a copper brasero, placed in the middle of the apartment, and in which some olive-stones were slowly burning. At the entrance of the leaders of the Dark-Hearts, these men rose.
"Why," asked Don Tadeo, who at the first glance recognized the emissary, "why did you not wait, Don Pedro, for the meeting tomorrow, at the Quinta Verde, to communicate to the council the revelations you have to make?"
The man thus named as Don Pedro bowed respectfully. He was an individual of about thirty-five years of age. He was tall, and his countenance, as sharp as the blade of a knife, wore a cunning, roguish expression.
"What I have to state only indirectly concerns the Dark-Hearts," he said.