However amazing it may be that a man who has no conscience should nevertheless have a heart, such appears to have been the case with that abnormal creature Coronado.

The desert had made him take a strong liking to Clara, and now that he had a rival at hand he became impassioned for her.

He began to want to marry her, not alone for the sake of her great fortune, but also for her own sake.

Her beauty unfolded and blossomed wonderfully before his ardent eyes; for he was under that mighty glamour of the emotions which enables us to see beauty in its completeness; he was favored with the greatest earthly second-sight which is vouchsafed to mortals.
Only in a measure, however; the money still counted for much with him.

He had already decided what he would do with the Munoz fortune when he should get it.