All arose very early, with a vague yearning hope that tidings might come with the morning light, and the eager greeting when two of that anxious household met together was always, “Have you heard?—are there any tidings?”
Annabella would not appear at the breakfast table. Ida, pale as sculptured marble, scarcely able to swallow the nourishment of which she partook as a duty, sat beside her father, every sense absorbed in anxious listening. She heard the postman’s step before she could see his form, and eagerly sprang forward to meet him, for it was possible—just possible—that he might be the bearer of news!
The man shook his head sadly when questioned; he had brought nothing but a parcel for the Countess of Dashleigh with the London post-mark upon it; and, with a sickening sense of disappointment, Ida bore it to the room of her cousin.
A strange gleam of hope flashed in the countess’s large hollow eyes, as, without noticing the post-mark, she tore open the little packet; it was followed by a strange revulsion of feeling. There lay before her, beautiful in its fanciful binding of violet and gold, its glittering edges bright from the hand of the gilder, “_THE FAIRY LAKE, by the COUNTESS OF DASHLEIGH_.”
There was a time when the youthful authoress would have gazed on the volume with delight, and turned over its pages with eager curiosity and pleasure! But now—there seemed written upon each a tale of wilful rebellion and insolent pride! Annabella flung her first book from her with an exclamation of anguish, for was it not connected in her mind with the fearful fate of her husband!
Then, with a sudden resolution, she rose from her seat, and hastily opened that desk at which she had penned her fatal article for the —— Magazine. Annabella would make some reparation, such reparation as yet was possible, for the deed so deeply repented of. The countess wrote, with a hand that shook so that she could scarcely form the letters, a note to her publisher in London, bidding him at once cancel the whole edition of her romance, prohibiting him from selling a single copy of the work which he had been hurrying through the press, and making herself responsible for his losses, whatever they might be. No earthly consideration would have induced the miserable wife to delay, even for an hour, the act by which she crushed the bud of hope, so long eagerly fostered, at the very moment when it burst into blossom! The young authoress, once soaring so high in the pride of literary ambition, was cutting the cords of her balloon!
