CHAPTER IX.
THE WHITE VIOLETS About this time Rodolphe was very much in love with his cousin Angela, who couldn't bear him; and the thermometer was twelve degrees below freezing point.
Mademoiselle Angela was the daughter of Monsieur Monetti, the chimney doctor, of whom we have already had occasion to speak.

She was eighteen years old, and had just come from Burgundy, where she lived five years with a relative who was to leave her all her property.

This relative was an old lady who had never been young apparently--certainly never handsome, but had always been very ill-natured, although--or perhaps because--very superstitious.

Angela, who at her departure was a charming child, and promised to be a charming girl, came back at the end of the five years a pretty enough young lady, but cold, dry, and uninteresting.
Her secluded provincial life, and the narrow and bigoted education she had received, had filled her mind with vulgar prejudices, shrunk her imagination, and converted her heart into a sort of organ, limited to fulfilling its function of physical balance wheel.

You might say that she had holy water in her veins instead of blood.