The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster (books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

They had been set in family connection,intimate by kin, intimate in earliest life by every outward tie, andespecially intimate by the subtile affinities of their spiritualnatures. Yet he who can, under any circumstances, entreat the love ofwoman, and then take advantage of her weakness or her confidence, is ananomaly in nature, and should have a special, judiciary here and inheaven.

Since so much of the romance here following is truth, veritable truth,it is to be regretted that any error of historical character wassuffered to assume importance in the narrative. Yet this is so often thecase in works of this kind, that it is not remarkable here. Moresurprising is it that truth was so carefully and conscientiously guardedand preserved.

In conflicting statements, it is difficult to determine the precise yearof the marriage of Mr. Edwards, whether before or after the death of"Eliza Wharton," although it may have been long before, even as one ofhis biographers has it, and that recklessness and e