“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!”