Mrs Brunton commenced a new novel, "Discipline;" but before it was completed "Waverley" appeared. It came into her hands, her husband says, while she was in the country, and when she had heard nothing of its reputation; but she at once discerned its high merit, and was so fascinated by it, that she could not go to bed till she had read it through. It happened that a scene of a part of her own work too was laid in the Highlands, about which a universal interest had been for some years before this awakened by Scott's "Lady of the Lake," and other poems; and her first impulse was to cancel the Highland portion of her story altogether; but to this sacrifice her husband strongly objected. Writing to one of her female friends in December, a few days before her new work was to appear, she says: "It is very unfortunate in coming after 'Waverley,' by far the most splendid exhibition of talent in novel-writing which has appeared since the days of Fielding and Smollett. There seems little doubt that it comes from the pen of Scott. What a competitor for poor little me!" When "Discipline" at length came out, however, its success was far greater than she anticipated. "But she was by no means gratified by it," we are told, "to the same extent she had been by the reception of 'Self-Control.' She was now well known to be the author, and therefore she was not so sure that the applause which reached her was all sincere." The silence of the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, too, annoyed and discouraged her.