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Grace. Sometimes Fanny is civil to Jack,
sometimes invisible. She has always entertained
a distrust and dislike of the Edwards� famiy,
instinctively knowing that they could not be but an-
tagonistic towards her. Two women more inherent-
ly averse to each other couldn�t exist than Mrs
Edwards and �Fanny Fern.� I am pretty sure, too,
of a special incident which may have put a keener
edge on Mrs Edwards� hostility. Parton was sup-
posed to have done a little philandering with Anne
Edwards, the eldest daughter of the family, (who
recently kept school at Elizabethtown in Jersey and
is now at Norfolk, Virginia,) a match between
them having been not improbable. His unfortunate
intimacy with Fanny marred this. With most other
men the woman would have failed in the characteresti-
cally coarse game she played. They would have pre-
ferred continuing the peculiar relations which I am
sure existed between Parton and her to a marriage
with a divorced wife and one of most inenviable no-
toriety. Hence Mrs Edwards is doubly
�down upon� Fanny, detesting her as a woman and
an authoress, and as one who has cut in and spoil-
ed the hand of
a quasi daughter, for she Miss Anne is the result of
papa Edwards first marriage. I don�t blame Mrs
E. for it. As long as girls who don�t get married
have such a melancholy look out in life, all good