palace in the fen lands was the scene of notable gatherings, much talked of in certain circles and commented on by people who would truthfully have described themselves as being "in the know."
These parties were, indeed, congresses of the eminent, the "big" people who quietly control an England which the ignorant and the vulgar love to imagine is in the hands of a corrupt society of well-born, "smart," and pleasure-seeking people.
The folk who gathered at Fencastle were as remote from the gambling, lecherous, rabbit-brained set which glitters so brightly before the eyes of the uninformed as any staid, middle-class reader of the popular journals.
In this stronghold of English Catholicism — "hot-bed of ritualists" as the brawling "Protestant" journals called it, one met a diversity of people, widely divided in views and only alike in one thing — the dominant quality of their brains and position.
Sir Michael thought it well that even his professed opponents should meet at his table, for it gave both him and his lieutenants new data and fresh impressions for use in the campaign. Sir Michael's convictions were perfectly unalterable, but to find out how others — and those hostile — really regarded them only added to the weapons in his armoury.
And, as one London priest once remarked to another, the combination of a Jewish brain and a Christian heart was one which had already revolutionised Society nearly two thousand years ago in the persons of eleven distinguished instances.
As Father Ripon drove to Liverpool Street Station after lunch, to catch the afternoon train to the eastern counties, he was reading a letter as his cab turned into Cheapside and crawled slowly through the heavy afternoon traffic of the city.
