tell
her to write no more novels. She looked up at him piteously but said
nothing. 'I don't think you'd find it answer. Of course you can do it
as well as a great many others. But then that is saying so little!'

'I thought I could make some money.'

'I don't think Mr Leadham would hold out to you very high hopes;--I
don't, indeed. I think I would turn to something else.'

'It is so very hard to get paid for what one does.'

To this Mr Broune made no immediate answer; but, after sitting for a
while, almost in silence, he took his leave. On that very morning Lady
Carbury had parted from her son. She was soon about to part from her
daughter, and she was very sad. She felt that she could hardly keep up
that house in Welbeck Street for herself, even if her means permitted
it. What should she do with herself? Whither should she take herself?
Perhaps the bitterest drop in her cup had come from those words of Mr
Broune forbidding her to write more novels. After all, then, she was
not a clever woman,--not more clever than other women around her!
That very morning she had prided herself on her coming success as a
novelist, basing all her hopes on that review in the 'Breakfast
Table.' Now, with that reaction of spirits which is so common to all
of us, she was more than equally despondent. He would not thus have
crushed her without a reason. Though he was hard to her now,--he who
used to be so soft,--he was very good. It did not occur to her to rebel
against him. After what he had said, of course there would be no more
praise in the 'Breakfast Table,'--and, equally of course, no novel of
hers could succeed without that. The more she thought of him, the more
omnipotent he seemed to be. The more she thought of herself, the more
absolutely prostrate she seemed to have fallen from those high hopes
with which she had begun her literary career not much more than twelve
months ago.

On the next day he did not come to her at all, and she sat idle,
wretched, and alone. She could not interest herself in Hetta's coming
marriage, as that marriage was in direct opposition to one of her
broken schemes. She had not ventured to confess so much to Mr Broune,
but she had in truth written the first pages of the first chapter of a
second novel. It was impossible now that she should even look at what
she had written. All this made her very sad. She spent the evening
quite alone; for Hetta was staying down in Suffolk, with her cousin's
friend, M