“I own it, dear Ida, I own it! I did wrong, very wrong. I felt that as soon as the letter had passed from my hand; I must have been mad when I sent it. I wrote to the London editor the next day to endeavour to stop the publication, but the piece was already in type.” Such, after a painful conference, was the confession which conscience wrung from the Countess of Dashleigh. Annabella was reclining on the sofa, her hair disordered, her eyes red with weeping. Ida was kneeling beside her, and the magazine lay on the floor. “O Anna, Anna! why not own all this to your husband; throw yourself on his mercy, entreat his forgiveness—” “It would be of no use!” exclaimed Annabella; “that paper he never will forgive. I have already merited his anger; I will not expose myself to his contempt.” “We may be objects of contempt when we wander from the line of duty, but never when we are struggling back to it again. When we are lost in a thorny labyrinth, what wiser, what nobler course can we pursue, than to retrace every step of the way?” “I can’t, I can’t,” gasped Annabella; “there is now a deep gulf between me and my husband!” “Which is widening every moment; which delay may render impassable! It is yet spanned by a slender bridge of hope; but that bridge is trembling,—shaking,—Annabella, if you hold back now, it may sink before your eyes, and for ever!” “What would you have me to do?” said the countess. “Write a letter to the earl full of the humblest submission; tell him with what real grief and contrition—” “Ida, you do not know me!” cried Annabella, pushing the loose hair impatiently back from her temples; “I cannot play the part of a penitent child, begging pardon for having been naughty; I cannot cringe beneath the rod, like a slave trembling before his master!” “Anna!” exclaimed Ida, fixing on her cousin the earnest gaze of her expressive eyes, “must the slender bridge—your last hope—be broken down beneath the weight of your pride?” “Pride,” observed the Countess, “has been termed the weakness of noble natures.” “Pride,—what is it,” exclaimed Ida, “as mirrored in the word of God? Is it not of _the world_,—that world that _passeth away_; doth not the Lord resist _the proud_, while giving _grace unto the humble_? Doth not inspired truth declare that _before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility_? Is not the Saviour’s blessing on _the meek_, and on such as are _poor in spirit_? Why should I multiply quotations? Your own heart must tell you, dear Anna, that if one thing more than another stands between man and his Maker, and darkens the light of Heaven, it is the baneful spirit of pride!” “It is interwoven with my nature,” said the countess.