Froude responded cordially, and became an habitual visitor.

Like all really good talkers, Carlyle was at his best with a single companion, and there could be no more sympathetic companion than Froude.

But there was another object of interest at Cheyne Row, and Froude felt for Mrs.Carlyle sincere compassion.

She was often left to herself while her husband wrote upstairs, and she suffered tortures from neuralgia.

It seemed to Froude that Carlyle, who never had a day's serious illness, felt more for his own dyspepsia and hypochondria than for his wife's far graver ailments.