"Pray offer your arm to my aunt, my dear duke," resumed the countess, totally indifferent to the divers emotions she had caused.
"I promised the embassadress de Sardaigne I would come early, as she is to present me to a relative, and, as you know, we must first visit that enchanted palace you spoke of, in all its details. This is an odd time for such a visit, it is true; but I admit I have a weakness or, rather, a passion, for anything odd. Originality is such a rare, charming thing!"
Preceding her aunt and the duke, the bewitching countess ran lightly down the wide stairs of the elegantly furnished house she had rented in the Rue de Rivoli, while in search of the mansion she wished to purchase in Paris.
On that evening the duke was to take his friends out in his own carriage; a very permissible liberty, since the bans of his marriage with the countess had already been published. After a few moments of waiting at the door of the mansion, the aunt and niece saw an enormous yellow landau advancing toward them, drawn by two emaciated horses mercilessly lashed by a coachman in red and blue livery.
"Why—this is not your carriage?" gasped the countess, gazing at the duke in amazement as the footman opened the portière of the vehicle.
"Certainly, madame," he replied. "And what has become of that pretty blue victoria, with the dapple grays, you placed at our disposal yesterday morning?"
"Under the present condition of affairs, my dear countess, I may as well make a clean breast of it," rejoined the duke, with touching abandon. "That I may not fatigue my valuable horses—for they did cost me enormously—I hire a carriage for the evening. This is a great point of economy, for it is always a risk to take out a valuable turnout at night."
"You are perfectly right, my dear duke," the princess hastened to say, fearing a new sarcasm from her niece; and, without further ado, she entered the heavy, lumbering thing, leaning on the arm of her escort.
The duke then offered his hand to the countess to assist her in her turn; but she stopped with one dainty foot resting on the last step, and peered curiously within.
"My dear aunt," she said sweetly, "will you be kind enough to examine the carriage well?"