" ... It will be as well for you to see the man _à huisclos_ and form your own opinions. There can be no doubt that he is a force to be reckoned with, and he is, moreover, as I think you will agree after inspection, far more brilliant and able than any other _professed_ antichristian of the front rank. Then there will also be Mrs. Hubert Armstrong. She is a pseudo-intellectual force, but her writings have a certain heaviness and authoritative note which I believe to have real influence with the large class of semi-educated people who mistake an _atmosphere_ of knowledge for knowledge itself. A very charming woman, by the way, and I think sincere. Matthew Arnold and water! "The Duke of Suffolk will stop a night on his way home. He writes that he wishes to see you. As you know, he is just back from Rome, and now that they have definitely pronounced against the validity of Anglican orders he is most anxious to have a further chat with you in order to form a working opinion as to _our_ position. From his letter to me, and the extremely interesting account he gives of his interview at the Vatican, I gather that the Roman Church still utterly misunderstands our attitude, and that hopes there are high of the ultimate "conversion" of England. I hope that as a representative of English Churchmen you will be able to define what we think in an unmistakable way. This will have value. Among my other guests you will meet Canon Walke. He is preaching in Lincoln Cathedral on the Sunday, fresh from Windsor. "Render unto Cæsar" will, I allow myself to imagine, not be an unlikely text for his homily.--I am, Father, yours most sincerely, "M. M." Still thinking carefully over Sir Michael's letter, Father Ripon bought his ticket and made his way to the platform. He got into a first-class carriage. While in London the priest lived a life of asceticism and simplicity which was not so much a considered thing as the outcome of an absolute and unconscious carelessness about personal and material comfort; when he went thus to a great country house, he complied with convention because it was politic. He was the grandson of a peer, and, though he laughed at these small points, he wished to meet his friend's opinions in any reasonable way, rather than to flout them. The carriage was empty, though a pile of newspapers and a travelling rug in one corner showed Father Ripon that he was to have one companion at any rate upon the journey. He had bought the _Church Times_ at the bookstall and was soon deeply immersed in the report of a Bampton Lecture delivered during the week at the University Church in Oxford. Some one entered the carriage, the door was shut, and the train began to move out of the station, but he was too interested to look up to see who his companion might be.