nd gives it to them with interest in the end.

It was very soon after my arrival in London that I was invited to lunch
at Hepworth Dixon's to meet Lord Lytton, or Bulwer, the great writer. His
works had been so intensely and sympathetically loved by me so long, that
it seemed as if I had been asked to meet some great man of the past. I
found him, as I expected, quite congenial and wondrous kind. I remember
a droll incident. Standing at the head of the stairs, he courteously
made way and asked me to go before. I replied, "When Louis XIV. asked
Crillon to do the same, Crillon complied, saying, 'Wherever your Majesty
goes, be it before or behind, is always the first place or post of
honour,' and I say the same with him," and so went in advance at once. I
saw by his expression that he was pleased with the quotation.

We were looking at a portrait of Shakespeare which Dixon had found in
Russia. Lord Lytton asked me if I thought it an original or true
likeness. I observed that the face was full of many fine seamy lines,
which infallibly indicate great nervous genius of the highest
order--noting at the same time that Lord Lytton's countenance was very
much marked in a like manner. The observation was new to him, and he
seemed to be interested in it, as he always was in anything like
chiromancy or metoscopy. A few days later I was invited to come and pass
nearly a week with Hepworth Dixon at Knebworth, Lord Lytton's country
seat. It is a very picturesque _chateau_, profusely adorned with
fifteenth-century Gothic grotesques, with a fine antique hall, stained
glass windows, and gallery. There is in it a chamber containing a
marvellous and massive carved oak bedstead, the posts of which are human
figures the size of life, and in it and in the same room Queen Elizabeth
is said to have slept when she heard of the destruction of the Spanish
Armada. It was the room of honour, and it had been kindly assigned to
me. It all seemed like a dream.

There was in the family of the late Lord Lytton his son, who made a most
favourable impression on me. I think the first _coup_ was my finding
that he knew the works of Andreini, and that it had occurred to him as
well as to me that Euphues Lily's book had been modelled on them. There
was also his wife, a magnificent and graceful beauty; Lord Lytton's
nephew, Mr. Bulwer; and several ladies. The first morning we all fished
in the pond, and, to my great amazement, Lord Lytton pulle