"Faith is weak in the world," said the priest, with a sigh, as the train drew up in the little wayside station.
A footman took their luggage to a carriage which was waiting, and they drove off rapidly through the twilight, over the bare brown fen with a chill leaden sky meeting it on the horizon, towards Fencastle.
Sir Michael's house was an immemorial feature of those parts. Josiah Manichoe, his father, had bought it from old Lord Lostorich. To this day Sir Michael paid two pounds each year, as "Knight's fee," to the lord of the manor at Denton, a fee first paid in 1236. As it stood now, the house was Tudor in exterior, covering a vast area with its stately, explicit, and yet homelike, rather than "homely," beauty.
The interior of the house was treated with great judgment and artistic ability. A successful effort had been made to combine the greatest measure of modern comfort without unduly disturbing the essential character of the place. Thus Father Ripon found himself in an ancient bedroom with a painted ceiling and panelled walls. The furniture was in keeping with the design, but electric lamps had been fitted to the massive pewter sconces on the wall, and the towel-rail by the washing-stand was made of copper tubing through which hot water passed constantly.
The dinner-gong boomed at eight and Ripon went down into the great hall, where a group of people were standing round an open fire of peat and coal.
Mrs. Bardilly, a widowed sister of Sir Michael's, acted as hostess, a quiet, matronly woman, very Jewish in aspect, shrewd and placid in temper, an admirable _châtelaine_.
Talking to her was Mrs. Hubert Armstrong, the famous woman novelist. Mrs. Armstrong was tall and grandly built. Her grey hair was drawn over a massive, manlike brow in smooth folds, her face was finely chiselled. The mouth was large, rather sweet in expression, but with a slight hinting of "superiority" in repose and condescension in movement. When she spoke, always in full, well-chosen periods, it was with an air of somewhat final pronouncement. She was ever _ex cathedra_.
The lady's position was a great one. Every two or three years she published a weighty novel, admirably written, full of real culture, and without a trace of humour. In those productions, treatises rather than novels, the theme was generally that of a high-bred philosophical negation of the Incarnation. Mrs. Armstrong pitied Christians with passionate certainty. Gently and lovingly she essayed to open blinded eyes to the truth. With great condescension she still believed in God and preached Christ as a mighty teacher.