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. They had literally no longer the
wherewithal to live. The tithe payers absolutely refused to fulfil
their obligations. As it happened, Jones, the man who had murdered the
auctioneer, was never brought to trial. He died shortly after his arrest
in a fit of _delirium tremens_ and nervous prostration brought on by
the sudden cessation of a supply of stimulants, and an example was lost,
that, had he been duly hanged, might have been made of the results of
defying the law. Mr. Granger was now too poor to institute any further
proceedings, which, in the state of public feeling in Wales, might or
might not succeed; he could only submit, and submission meant beggary.
Indeed he was already a beggar. In this state of affairs he took counsel
with Elizabeth, pointing out that they must either get money or starve.
Now the only possible way to get money was by borrowing it, and Mr.
Granger's suggestion was that he should apply to Owen Davies, who had
plenty. Indeed he would have done so long ago, but that the squire had
the reputation of being an exceedingly close-fisted man.

But this proposition did not at all suit Elizabeth's book. Her great
object had been to conceal Mr. Davies's desires as regards Beatrice from
her father, and her daily dread was that he might become acquainted with
them from some outside source. She knew very well that if her father
went up to the Castle to borrow money