This is a rather depressing tale of unrequited love, leading to bitterness, anger, and betrayal.

Pauline learns that the man she loves is married to someone else She is comforted by Manuel, a man a few years younger than she, who has loved her for a long time. She agrees to marry him.. but he knows that she only cares for him as a friend, and thinks of him as a brother rather than a husband.

Alas, there were no redeeming features to this book in which Pauline shows an increasingly vicious desire for revenge, leading, in a shocking climax, to a lifetime of regret.

I suppose it might be considered a moral tale, pointing out the evils of bitterness and the disasters befalling a lust for revenge. I just found it depressing. ( )

This is one of Louisa May Alcott's darkest works, again showing how talented she was at writing in different genres; a mark of a great author.

This is a tale of a scorned woman's revenge on a man who informed her - via letter - that he'd dropped her to marry someone with more money.

Thus the passion in the story is about Pauline's desire to get even, which involves her using a man who's besotted with her, and a former female school friend, without accounting for how her (Pauline's) actions against her betrayer will affect those two who are innocent.

The punishment comes at the end of the tale and I can't mention anymore here without giving things away. ( )