"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?" "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. The footman closed the carriage door, gave his instructions to the coachman, who lashed his jaded horses, and the lumbering landau started in the direction of _Cours-la-Reine_, where the marvelous Saint-Ramon mansion was situated. CHAPTER XVII. The heavy vehicle rolled on so slowly, that a pedestrian walking in the same direction, easily kept up with it through the whole length of the _Cours-la-Reine_, although he seemed anything but nimble footed. He was poorly dressed and leaned painfully on his stick; his long beard was white, as well as his hair and bushy eyebrows, and the dark color of his wrinkled face gave him the appearance of a mulatto. As the landau approached the Saint-Ramon mansion, however, the coachman was forced to take his place in the long procession of carriages going in the same direction, thus permitting the pedestrian to gain a certain distance ahead.