Human nature can rise to strange heights, and it can also fall to depths
beyond your fathoming. Because a thing is without parallel in your own
small experience it in no way follows that it cannot be.
Elizabeth was a very remorseless person; she was more--she was a woman
actuated by passion and by greed: the two strongest motives known to the
human heart. But with her recklessness she united a considerable degree
of intelligence, or rather of intellect. Had she been a savage she might
have removed her sister from her path by a more expeditious way; being
what she was, she merely strove to effect the same end by a method not
punishable by law, in short, by murdering her reputation. Would she be
responsible if her sister went wrong, and was thus utterly discredited
in the eyes of this man who wished to marry her, and whom Elizabeth
wished to marry? Of course not; that was Beatrice's affair. But she
could give her every chance of falling into temptation, and this it was
her fixed design to do.
Circumstances soon gave her an opportunity. The need of money became
very pressing at the Vicarage.
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