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.
One of her utterances suffices to show the colossal arrogance — almost laughable were it not so bizarre — of her intellect:
