ising his profession at
St. Louis, they received his last letter written on the eve of his
departure for the seat of war. At first the news overwhelmed them with
grief, but then they sought relief in faith, answered his letter
cheerfully and commended him to the infinite mercy of God.

CHAPTER XV.

CAP CAPTIVATES A CRAVEN.

"He knew himself a villain, but he deemed
The rest no better than the thing he seemed;
And scorned the best as hypocrites who hid
Those deeds the bolder spirits plainly did.
He knew himself detested, but he knew
The hearts that loathed him crouched and--dreaded, too."

The unregenerate human heart is, perhaps, the most inconsistent thing
in all nature; and in nothing is it more capricious than in the
manifestations of its passions; and in no passion is it so fantastic as
in that which it miscalls love, but which is really often only
appetite.

From the earliest days of manhood Craven Le Noir had been the votary of
vice, which he called pleasure. Before reaching the age of twenty-five
he had run the full course of dissipation, and found himself ruined in
health, degraded in character and disgusted with life.

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