CHAPTER V.—THE ABDUCTION.
Why, man, she is mine own;
And I as rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
Shakspere.
Lester Vane, while he indulged his appetite for profligate pleasures or pursued with pertinacity a revengeful purpose, never lost sight of his personal interest, especially where that interest centred itself upon an object awakening his selfish desire.
He had a double motive in desiring to obtain the hand of Flora Wilton. He needed the income she would bring with her, and he coveted her beautiful self. He loved her, so far as he could love anything feminine apart from a lower emotion, intensely, and was, in fact, sufficiently fascinated by her charms to have married her had she been penniless, even if he had neglected and ill-treated her afterwards.
As she was circumstanced she was a valuable prize, for she had beauty and riches too. The combination was something rare; no one comprehended or appreciated that fact better than himself. How he would be envied when she was his—fortune and all. He never separated that consideration from the pictures his imagination sketched of the future. He dwelt upon the vision which saw him folding the fair creature to his heart, and placing the fortune she brought to his own credit at his own banker’s.