"Why, my dear," asked the princess naïvely.
"Because I am afraid some freckled, red-headed miss, or some fat city merchant may have been forgotten in some obscure corner of this thing. These worthy people usually drive out in family parties in just such equipages, and I have a horrible fear of finding some of them under the seats."
"Really, Foedora, I fail to understand you," returned the princess, angrily, while her niece sank in the seat beside her with a laugh. "You are absurdly severe toward M. de Riancourt—what can you be thinking of?"
"I want to cure him of his meanness and impudence," retorted the countess, coolly. "Could I better prove my interest in him?"
At that moment the duke entered the carriage and took his seat opposite the princess and her niece. Though he seemingly endured with the most Christianly patience all the railleries of the young woman who possessed all kinds of precious mines, the furtive glance he cast on her now and then, and the contraction of his thin lips, betrayed the rancour that filled his heart and foreboded no good for the future.
"To the Ramon mansion," he ordered the footman, who stood at the door.
"Beg pardon, monsieur, but I don't know where it is," replied the man, respectfully.
"At the end of the Cours-la-Reine, in the direction of the quartier Jean-Gonjan," explained the duke.
"Monsieur means that large mansion which has been in course of construction for so many years?"
"That very place," assented the duke.