But it is not impossible.
If you, who doubt, will study the law reports, and no worse occupation can be wished to you, you will find that such things are possible.
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.