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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER in. NO CREATURE SMARTS SO LITTLE AS A FOOL. Mariana drew near the fire shivering, though the day was not cold. This was her thought ?' I would have gone away with him, and he has married her?my sister!' and she leaned her head on her hand, with a half- suppressed groan. Mrs. Selwyn read the letter again, hut with an ignorant blindness as to her daughter's feelings. The mother wanted sympathy. ' Mariana, this is such an agony to me! He is such a scoundrel! I must go and see her, or I may never ?' and the mother's voice hroke off in a sob. ' She does not deserve it, mamma.' ' No, my dear; but I may never see her again.' Mariana felt that she hoped she might never have the punishment of having to meet one of whom she loathed the thought. Of Edward she dared not think. She loved him still, and he was her sister's husband; and had declared, so Bella stated, that he had never loved before. She did not know that the same phrase had been repeated twenty times to as many different women; and that even where there is no intention to deceive, every man thinks that the last shrine at which he worships contains alone the vera dea. Mariana, with every pulse quivering with wounded affection, thought that her mother was cold-hearted that she did not sympathise with the agony she endured. ' She must know it,' the poor girl thought. Young and old look at circumstances from points of view so different. Mrs. Selwyn felt as one might do, who, having saved a dearly loved childfrom the brink of a precipice, has suffered one equally dear to fall over, without a suspicion that she had been in danger. How could she stop to sympathise with the torn garments and scratched fingers of the one she had saved, when all her suffering was for the inevitable fate of the other ? 'Do...