Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/324

316 is to be found in all England than this brave and true woman.”

Thus far testifies the nameless writer in the Golden Age concerning their marriage. But other and later writers in regard to this matter, writing since the death of the first Mrs. Lewes and the legal marriage of George Eliot to Mr. Lewes, give a different version of the story; averring that after Mr. Lewes had, with rare generosity, forgiven his former wife's first sin against him and taken her back to his heart and home, she again eloped with another lover, and the English law debarred him from a divorce. The Golden Age writer may be mistaken as to the children of George Lewes, as nowhere else have I ever seen any mention of children by either marriage, though there can be no doubt that one who can portray so vividly as she does the true depths of maternal love would make a devoted mother, or stepmother, even.

When they thus joined their fates together, both were mature in years and in