Mr Norrell lifted his eyes very slowly. “I shall be happy to meet Mr Strange,” he said.

Mr Drawlight was not made to wait long before he witnessed the momentous interview between the two magicians (which was just as well for Mr Drawlight hated to wait). An invitation was issued and both Lascelles and Drawlight made it their business to be present when Mr Strange waited upon Mr Norrell.

He proved neither as young nor as handsome as Mr Norrell had feared. He was nearer thirty than twenty and, as far as another gentleman may be permitted to judge these things, not handsome at all. But what was very unexpected was that he brought with him a pretty young woman: Mrs Strange.

Mr Norrell began by asking Strange if he had brought his writing? He would, he said, very much like to read what Mr Strange had written.

“My writing?” said Strange and paused a moment. “I am afraid, sir, that I am at a loss to know what you mean. I have written nothing.”

“Oh!” said Mr Norrell. “Mr Drawlight told me that you had been asked to write something for The Gentleman’s Magazine but perhaps …”

“Oh, that!” said Strange. “I have scarcely thought about it. Nichols assured me he did not need it until the Friday after next.”

“A week on Friday and not yet begun!” said Mr Norrell, very much astonished.

“Oh!” said Strange. “I think that the quicker one gets these things out of one’s brain and on to the paper and off to the printers, the better. I dare say, sir,” and he smiled at Mr Norrell in a friendly manner, “that you find the same.”

Mr Norrell, who had never yet got any thing successfully out of his brain and off to the printers, whose every attempt was still at some stage or other of revision, said nothing.

“As to what I shall write,” continued Strange, “I do not quite know yet, but it will most likely be a refutation of Portishead’s article in The Modern Magician.¹ Did you see it, sir? It put me in a rage for a week. He sought to prove that modern magicians have no business dealing with fairies. It is one thing to admit that we have lost the power to raise such spirits – it is quite another to renounce all intention of ever employing them! I have no patience with any such squeamishness. But what is most extraordinary is that I have yet to see any criticism of Portishead’s article anywhere. Now that we have something approaching a magical community I think we would be very wrong to let such thickheaded nonsense pass unreproved.”

Strange, apparently thinking that he had talked enough, waited for one of the other gentlemen to reply.

After a moment or two of silence Mr Lascelles remarked that Lord Portishead had written the article at Mr Norrell’s express wish and with Mr Norrell’s aid and approval.

“Indeed?” Strange looked very much astonished.