Once when he was walking with my wife in the garden of their house in Surrey, she turned the conversation which had been touching other topics to speak of George Eliot.

"Oh," said Lewes, stopping short and looking at her with those bright eyes of his, "_Your blood be on your own head_! I didn't begin it; but if you wish to speak of her, _I_ am always ready." It was this complete candour, and the genuineness of his admiring love for her, which made its manifestations delightful, and freed them from offence..