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. One of her utterances suffices to show the colossal arrogance--almost laughable were it not so _bizarre_--of her intellect: "_The world has expanded since Jesus preached in the dim ancient cities of the East. Men and women of to-day cannot learn the_ complete _lesson of God from him now--indeed they could not in those old times. But all that is most necessary in forming character, all that makes for pureness and clarity of soul--this Jesus has still for us as he had for the people of his own time._" After the enormous success of her book, _John Mulgrave_, Mrs. Armstrong more than half believed she had struck a final blow at the errors of Christianity. Shrewd critics remarked that _John Mulgrave_ described the perversion of the hero with great skill and literary power, while quite forgetting to recapitulate the arguments which had brought it about. The woman was really educated, but her success was with half-educated readers. Her works excited to a sort of frenzy clergymen who realised their insidious hollowness. Her success was real; her influence appeared to be real also. It was a deplorable fact that she swayed fools. By laying on the paint very thick and using bright colours, Mrs. Armstrong caught the class immediately below that which read the works of Constantine Schuabe. They were captain and lieutenant, formidable in coalition. A short, carelessly dressed man--his evening tie was badly arranged and his trousers were ill cut--was the Duke of Suffolk. His face was covered with dust-coloured hair, his eyes bright and restless. The Duke was the greatest Roman Catholic nobleman in England. His vast wealth and eager, though not first-class, brain were devoted entirely to the conversion of the country. He was beloved by men of all creeds.