Yet in all this experience his heart had not been once agitated with
a single emotion that deserved the name of passion. It was colder
than the coldest.
He had not loved Clara, though, for the sake of her money, he had
courted her so assiduously. Indeed, for the doctor's orphan girl he
had from the first conceived a strong antipathy. His evil spirit had
shrunk from her pure soul with the loathing a fiend might feel for
an angel. He had found it repugnant and difficult, almost to the
extent of impossibility, for him to pursue the courtship to which he
was only reconciled by a sense of duty to--his pocket.
It was reserved for his meeting with Capitola at the altar of the
Forest Chapel to fire his clammy heart, stagnant blood and sated
senses with the very first passion that he had ever known. Her
image, as she stood there at the altar with flashing eyes and
flaming cheeks and scathing tongue defying him, was ever before his
mind's eye. There was something about that girl so spirited, so
piquant and original that she impressed even his apathetic nature as
no other woman had ever been able to do. But what most of all
attracted him to Capitola was her diablerie. He longed to catch that
little savage to his bosom and have her at his mercy. The aversion
she had exhibited toward him only stimulated his passion.
Craven Le Noir, among his other graces, was gifted with inordinate
vanity.
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