Read "Valerie" by Frederick Marryat online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I put the papers down on the table as soon as I had finished them, and for a long while was absorbed in meditation.
"Is it possible," thought I, "that love disappointed can turn to such fury -- can so harden the heart to all better feelings -- induce a woman to shorten the days of her parent -- to allow a sister to remain in painful error on her death-bed, and wreak vengeance upon an innocent being, regardless of all justice? Grant, then, that I may never yield to such a passion! Who would have ever imagined, that the careless, eccentric Lady R -- had such a load of crime weighing her down, and daily and hourly reminded of it by the presence of the injured party? How callous she must have become by habit, to still delay doing an act of justice -- how strange that the fear of the world and its opinion should be greater than the fear of God!"