The limber, maturing, rounding form of Hulda stepped on the footstool of
his mind, touched his knee, and exhaled the aroma of her youth like a
subtile musk, till he leaned back languidly, as if he smoked a pipe and
on its bowl her bust was painted, and all her modesties dissolved into
the intoxication. Brutality itself grew natural to this vision, as a
fiercer joy and substitute for the deceit he could no longer practice.
The child had flown from her in the instant of his grasping it, like a
pale butterfly, but there remained where it had floated, a silken and
nubile essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts and
sweet respect, the profanation of which would be as rare a game as
Satan's struggle with the soul of Eve.
Her innocence and spirit, self-respect and awakened womanly
consciousness, weakness and sensibility, mettle and beauty, presented
themselves by turns; and the cold, woodeny room, the neglected tavern,
the autumn night wind coming down the chimney and starting the fire, all
seemed instinctive, like him, with mischief, as if Patty Cannon's soul
flew astraddle of a broom and led a hundred witches.
McLane was fifty; his family was a stiff commercial one, that had
generally kept demure, yet grasping, and practised the conservatism he
also boasted of, but had departed from: he was the outlaw of the house,
yet elevating its tenets into an aggressive shibboleth, the more so that
he prospered by anti-progress.
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