Pray reckon it amongst the good you do in this world, that you come very often into our thoughts and conversation.
We see comparatively so few people that we are apt to recur to recollections of those we like best with almost childish frequency, and a little fresh news about you would be a welcome variety, especially the news that you had quite shaken off that spine indisposition which was still clinging to you that last morning when we said our good-byes.

We have enough knowledge about you and your world to interpret all the details you can give us.

But our words about our own home doings would be very vague and colourless to you.
You must always imagine us coming to see you and wanting to know as much about you as we can, and like a charming hostess gratify that want.

I must thank you for the account of Cavour in _The Athenaeum_, which stirred me strongly.

I am afraid I have what _The Saturday Review_ would call 'a morbid delight in deathbeds'-- not having reached that lofty superiority which considers it bad taste to allude to them.
"How is Beatrice, the blessed and blessing?
That will always be a history to interest us--how her brown hair darkens, how her voice deepens and strengthens, and how you get more and more delight in her.
I need send no separate message to Mr.Trollope, before I say that "I am always yours, with lively remembrance, "MARION E.LEWES." * * * * * It needed George Eliot's fine and minute handwriting to put all this into one page of note-paper.
The next letter that came from Blandford Square, dated 9th December, 1861, was also a joint one, the larger portion of which however is from her pen.
* * * * * "DEAR GOOD PEOPLE,--If your ears burn as often as you are talked about in this house, there must be an unpleasant amount of aural circulation to endure! And as the constant _refrain_ is, 'Really we must write to them, that they may not altogether slip away from us,' I have this morning screwed my procrastination to the writing-desk.
"First and foremost let us know how you are, and what are the results of the bathing.