The Countess of Dashleigh sat in her boudoir, surrounded by all the luxuries which art can devise or wealth procure. But she paid little attention to anything around her, for her thoughts were absorbed in her occupation,—to a young authoress a very delightful occupation,—that of revising the proof-sheets of her first romance. “Egeria” was now taking a flight above the columns of a periodical; she was about to present to the world a volume in violet and gold! How to give her ideas the richest setting, how to display her talent to most advantage, was now the one prevailing thought which occupied her mind from morning till night. Annabella was like a mother rejoicing over a first-born child; and she examined the rough proofs with the interest and delight which a young parent might feel in surveying the little elegancies of the wardrobe of her darling babe.

“Egeria” smiled to herself as she imagined the various reviews of her work which would doubtless appear in the papers and periodicals of the day. She fancied what passages would be extracted, what characters praised; what might possibly be censured, what must be admired. In the midst of her enjoyment of this feast of imagination, she was interrupted by the entrance of the earl. Alas! that the presence of a husband should ever be felt unwelcome!

“Annabella, my love, I have just received a letter, which I should be obliged by your answering for me. I am glad to find you with a pen in your hand.”

“Presently, Reginald; I will answer it presently,” said the countess, a slight frown of impatience passing over her brow; “I am most exceedingly busy at present.”

“What are you doing?” inquired the earl, who was not in the secret of his lady’s occupation, though aware that she devoted much time to her pen. “May I see?” he added, taking up one of the dirty proof-sheets which had just received Annabella’s corrections.

“Are you to be my first critic?” said the countess playfully; “if so, I hope that you will be an indulgent one.”

The earl looked for a few minutes a little embarrassed, as if a subject had been suddenly brought before him on which he had not had time to make up his mind. He then seated himself on the sofa, and twisting the paper about in his fingers as he addressed his wife without looking at her, he began in his somewhat formal style:—“It seems to me, Annabella, that authorship is not what is most exactly suitable for one who holds the position of a countess.”

“Are countesses then supposed to be more stupid than other people?” asked Annabella.

The earl made no direct reply to a question which appeared to him rather impertinent. He was desirous to avoid an argument, and rather to have recourse to persuasion. “You have so many other resources,” he began, “so many pleasures—”

“Not one of them,—not all of them together to be compared to this!” exclaimed Annabella with animation. “I value the smallest bay-leaf from Parnassus more than the strawberry-leaves on a ducal coronet!”

The Earl of Dashleigh was offended. “I am aware, madam,” he said stiffly, “that you take a pride in disparaging the advantages of high social standing. A lofty position has no charms for you.”

“I have known the time, Dashleigh,” said his wife, laughing, but with something of bitterness in her mirth, “when a lofty position had no charms for you. When you stood upon a certain Swiss mountain, able neither to get upwards nor downwards, and glad of the assistance of my little hand—”

“That has nothing on earth to do with the question!” cried the earl, colouring and looking angry.

“Oh! I beg your lordship’s pardon; I was going to draw an analogy, as the learned say; I was going to make a metaphor of a fact. I looked at snowy peaks, deep abysses, awful chasms, and was transported with a sense of their grandeur, as you are with that of hereditary rank! Mont Blanc seemed to me loftier—more sublime—than the woolsack appears to you! You, on the contrary, grew a little dizzy,—you only considered the fatigue of the climbing, and the danger—”

“This is idle talk!” cried the earl impatiently. “I happened to be taken with a fit of vertigo, and—and of course you have no intention of publishing?” he inquired, making a very abrupt turn in the conversation.

“Of course I have,” replied Annabella.

“You do not mean to—to let me infer for a moment that you, the Countess of Dashleigh, have ever dreamed of deriving any pecuniary advantage—” The words appeared almost to choke him, so he left the sentence incomplete.

“You do not suppose that I intend to make a present to the publisher of the effusions of my genius,” said the lady. “No, I have the pleasure of working for a good cause. The new gallery of our church is to be propped up by this little pen!” and with some pride Annabella held upright on the table the small instrument of her literary power.

“Really, madam, you astonish me!” exclaimed the peer, rising in surprise and indignation. “The Countess of Dashleigh to enter the lists with Grub Street penny-a-liners,—the Countess of Dashleigh to receive payment from a publisher, to earn a miserable pittance like any wretched mechanic—”

“To do what Shakspeare, Milton, Johnson, did before her.”

“They were not of the peerage,” interrupted Dashleigh.

“No, they were something more!” exclaimed Annabella. “They were ‘below the good how far; but far above the great!’ I should be only too proud to follow in their steps!”

“I tell you it is impossible,—utterly impossible,” repeated the earl. “My wife to work for hire! I could never show my face again in the House of Lords if I submitted to such a degradation!”

Poor Annabella was like a child whose high-built house of cards has been suddenly dashed to the ground. Her eyes filled fast with tears, but she was too proud to let them overflow.

The earl was not a hard man. He saw that he had given pain, and hastened to smoothe down his young wife’s disappointment.

“Since writing gives you such amusement,” he said, “I will not altogether discourage it. You may print that work for private circulation—I have no great objection to that—and as for the gallery of the church, I will support that by a handsome donation.”

Dashleigh thought that this concession must entirely satisfy Annabella, but in this he showed little knowledge of the peculiar ambition of his wife. What! was she never to see a review of her work in a leading paper,—was she to limit its circulation,—were a few friends and acquaintance alone to enjoy what she had expected would excite a sensation throughout the literary world! This would be clipping the wings of her Pegasus indeed, and making him the mere carriage-horse of a peer!

“I would rather burn my volume at once,” she said pettishly, “than have it merely printed for private circulation. I should be ashamed to send it round like a begging-box to my acquaintance, with an understood petition of ‘compliments thankfully received!’”

“You could not endure to see your book hawked about, sold on miserable stalls, thumbed in circulating libraries!”

The idea was shocking to the earl, but very delightful to Annabella. “I could endure it very well,” she said coldly; “I see no harm in the thing.”

“But I see it, madam,” exclaimed Dashleigh, “and what’s more, I will not suffer it to be done! Your dignity is connected with my own; it may be nothing to you, but it is something to me. If my wishes have no effect, you will at least listen to my commands.”

“Tyrant!” whispered the demon Pride; and the heart of Annabella echoed the treasonous word ‘tyrant!’

The earl was satisfied with having taken a step so decided. He had no wish to prolong a discussion with his wife, in which, as he knew by experience, she generally had the advantage. Having uttered his mandate he quitted the room, leaving Annabella in a state of angry excitement.

“Private circulation! I may print for private circulation! most condescending concession from my lord!” she muttered to herself, as she sat gloomily surveying the proofs which had lately afforded her such keen delight. Then a thought seemed at once to strike the countess, her over-cast countenance lighted up with a gleam as if of triumph. “Yes; I will write something for private circulation,” she cried, “something which my lord will find so very amusing, so highly diverting, that he will be glad to compound for its suppression by letting me do what I like with my book. Mine shall be a little romance in real life, an incident in the life of a peer of the realm!” and, dashing the drops from her eyes, Annabella at once sat down to her desk.

She wrote in a fit of resentment, and what she penned naturally took the colour of her feelings. The countess wrote a ludicrous account of a little adventure which had occurred to the Earl of ——, the dash serving as a transparent veil which every one could see through. She recounted how the earl, accompanied by his wife, who was fired with the ambition of emulating the feats which Albert Smith has rendered famous, ascended part of the way up a Swiss mountain. She described how, long ere the snowy region was reached, the nobleman had been seized with giddiness and nervous fear; how he had stood on a steep slope, with a precipice on either hand, clutching tremblingly at the rock-plants which gave way in his grasp, calling out in alarm for aid, and thankful at last to catch hold of the end of a boa which his more active and fearless partner extended from the summit of a cliff. It was a relief to Annabella to give vent to her anger and malice in this little, humorous sketch. She wrote without any deliberate intention of ever showing it to a human eye; her paper took to her the place of a female confidante, that too often mischievous companion to a woman who is not happily married.

Having finished her little piece the countess descended to the drawing-room, to pass a sullen, uncomfortable evening in the society of her aristocratic husband.