Five years elapsed, and Elinor began to write fiction.

The beginning of a novel, and many incoherent verses imitated from Lara, were discovered by her mother, and burnt by her father.

This outrage she never forgave.

She was unable to make her resentment felt, for she no longer cared to break glass and china.

She feared even to remonstrate lest she should humiliate herself by bursting into tears, as, since her illness, she had been prone to do in the least agitation.