“I have no plans, Duchess,” he said.  “Your country is very delightful, and the hospitality of the friends I have made over here is too wonderful a thing to be described; but one never knows.”

Lady Grace bent towards Sir Charles, who was sitting by her side.

“I can never understand the Prince,” she murmured.  “Always he seems as though he took life so earnestly.  He has a look upon his face which I never see in the faces of any of you other young men.”

“He is a bit on the serious side,” Sir Charles admitted.

“It isn’t only that,” she continued.  “He reminds me of that man whom we all used to go and hear preach at the Oratory.  He was the same in the pulpit and when one saw him in the street.  His eyes seemed to see through one; he seemed to be living in a world of his own.”

“He was a religious Johnny, of course,” Sir Charles remarked.  “They do walk about with their heads in the air.”

Lady Grace smiled.

“Perhaps it is religion with the Prince,” she said,—­“religion of a sort.”

“I tell you what I do think,” Sir Charles murmured.  “I think his pretence at having a good time over here is all a bluff.  He doesn’t really cotton to us, you know.  Don’t see how he could.  He’s never touched a polo stick in his life, knows nothing about cricket, is indifferent to games, and doesn’t even understand the meaning of the word ‘Sportsman.’  There’s no place in this country for a man like that.”

Lady Grace nodded.

“I think,” she said, “that his visit to Europe and his stay amongst us is, after all, in the nature of a pilgrimage.  I suppose he wants to carry back some of our civilization to his own people.”

Penelope, who overheard, laughed softly and leaned across the table.

“I fancy,” she murmured, “that the person you are speaking of would not look at it in quite the same light.”

“Has any one seen the evening paper?” the Duchess asked.  “It is there any more news about that extraordinary murder?”

“Nothing fresh in the early editions,” Sir Charles answered.

“I think,” the Duchess declared, “that it is perfectly scandalous.  Our police system must be in a disgraceful state.  Tell me, Prince,—­could anything like that happen in your country?”

“Without doubt,” the Prince answered, “life moves very much in the East as with you here.  Only with us,” he added a little thoughtfully, “there is a difference, a difference of which one is reminded at a time like this, when one reads your newspapers and hears the conversation of one’s friends.”

“Tell us what you mean?” Penelope asked quickly.

He looked at her as one might have looked at a child,—­kindly, even tolerantly.  He was scarcely so tall as she was, and Penelope’s attitude towards him was marked all the time with a certain frigidity.  Yet he spoke to her with the quiet, courteous confidence of the philosopher who unbends to talk to a child.