The two previous answers are excellent, but I would like to add another motivating factor. Abby has constructed a lie that she is unable to extricate herself from...like a drowning person, she clings to whatever salvation she might find, even if it means dragging an innocent person (Elizabeth) down to save herself.
There is not much to recommend Abigail. She has already shown that she is ruthless in her desire to save her own skin. Consider her threatening of poor Betty and the other girls in Act 1:
And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next to mine and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!
Then compare Abigail's selfishness to that of Proctor's eventual moral dignity in Act 3, speaking of Abigail: "She thinks to dance with me on my wife's grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore's vengeance, and you must see it."
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