rge Eliot said finally that she had come to
know my mother in spirit life, where she was called STELLA. Now my
mother's name in earth life was Ellen, which has the same root for its
origin. Of course, Miss Maynard did not then know whether my mother were
alive or dead, and nothing naturally concerning her Christian name.

The last statement made by George Eliot on this occasion was that
"_before another year had rolled by, a great gift would come to me, and
I must be very careful to use without abusing it_." I was too tired at
the moment to ask whether "another year rolling by" meant a whole year
from 28th October 1887 (the date of the message), or the end of the
current year--namely, 31st December 1887.

When the message had come to an end, Miss Maynard gathered up the
scattered sheets, and promising to copy them out for me, took her
departure, and left me to muse--so far as a racking brain would
allow--on the curious and interesting result of her visit. No cup of tea
to thirsty wayfarer was ever surely so grandly rewarded!

My next adventure had a distant connection with these Australian
experiences.

I had come out to join the friend (Miss Greenlow) who had been my
companion in America, and who had thence sailed for Sydney when I
returned for a year to England. She had been anxious for me to rejoin
her in Australia, and from thence visit Japan and China; but my arrival
having been delayed by literary matters, this lady had finally lost
patience, and, without my knowledge, had gone on to New Zealand, and
thence, as it turned out, to Samoa. When I heard of the New Zealand
episode there was nothing for it but to follow her there, on a
will-o'-the-wisp expedition, as it turned out, but, fortunately, I was
unaware of this at the time. I say fortunately, because had I known that
she had already left Australia for Samoa, I should certainly have
returned to England, in despair of tracing her any further, and thereby
one of my most interesting experiences would have been lost.

The illness in Melbourne, already referred to, detained me for over a
fortnight, so it was necessary to transfer my New Zealand ticket from
one boat to another. So the illness also must have been one of the
factors that was involved in the adventure, as I have called it. For the
delay led to my meeting--in a friend's house--Mr Arthur Kitchener (a
younger brother of Lord Kitchener), who was introduced to me on the
special ground that we were to be