His flattering impatience was vexatious.

He admired her work, yet he did his utmost to render it little admirable.

His literary taste was not that of young Arthur Rhodes, to whom she could read her chapters, appearing to take counsel upon them while drinking the eulogies: she suspected him of prosaic ally wishing her to make money, and though her exchequer was beginning to know the need of it, the author's lofty mind disdained such sordidness: to be excused, possibly, for a failing productive energy.

She encountered obstacles to imaginative composition.

With the pen in her hand, she would fall into heavy musings; break a sentence to muse, and not on the subject.