The dinner was a family dinner, but far from being tiresome or dull. The Duke and Lord Exham had both adventures to tell. The latter in passing through a little market-town had seen the hungry people take the wheat from the grain-market by force, and said he had been delayed a little by the circumstance.
“But why?” asked the Duchess.
“There were some arrests made; and after all, one cannot see hungry men and women punished for taking food.” There was silence after this remark, and Kate glanced at Exham, whose veiled eyes, cast upon the glass of wine he held in his hand, betrayed nothing. But when he lifted them, they caught something from Kate’s eyes, and an almost imperceptible smile passed from face to face. No one asked Exham for further particulars; and the Duke hurriedly changed the subject. “Where do you think I took lunch to-day?” he asked.
“At Stephen’s,” answered the Duchess.
“Not likely,” he replied. “I am neither a fashionable officer, nor a dandy about town. If I had asked for lunch there, the waiters would have stared solemnly, and told me there was no table vacant.”
“As you want horses, perhaps you went to Limmers,” said Exham.
“No. I met a party of gentlemen and ladies going to Whitbread’s Brewery, and I went with them. We had a steak done on a hot malt shovel, and plenty of stout to wash it down. There were quite a number of visitors there; it has become one of the sights of London. Then I rode as far as the Philosophical Society, and heard a lecture on a new chemical force.”
“The Archbishop does not approve of your devotion to Science,” said the Duchess, reprovingly.
“I know it,” he answered. “All our clergy regard Science as a new kind of sin. I saw the Archbishop later, at a very interesting ceremony,–the deposition in Whitehall Chapel of twelve Standards taken in Andalusia by the personal bravery of our soldiers.”
“I wish I had seen that ceremony,” said Kate.