“Were my fortune such as would support her according to her merit, I don’t know a woman more formed to insure happiness in the married state.”

“Then prithee, my dear lad,” said his father, “since your rank and fortune are so much beneath what your Princess might expect, be so kind as to turn your eyes on Miss Weatherby; who, having only an estate of three thousand a year, is more upon a level with you, and whose father yesterday solicited the mighty honour of your alliance.  I shall leave you to consider on this offer; and pray remember, that your union with Miss Weatherby will put it in your power to be more liberally the friend of Lucy Eldridge.”

The old gentleman walked in a stately manner out of the room; and Temple stood almost petrified with astonishment, contempt, and rage.

CHAPTER V.

Such things are.

Miss Weatherby was the only child of a wealthy man, almost idolized by her parents, flattered by her dependants, and never contradicted even by those who called themselves her friends:  I cannot give a better description than by the following lines.

     The lovely maid whose form and face
     Nature has deck’d with ev’ry grace,
     But in whose breast no virtues glow,
     Whose heart ne’er felt another’s woe,
     Whose hand ne’er smooth’d the bed of pain,
     Or eas’d the captive’s galling chain;
     But like the tulip caught the eye,
     Born just to be admir’d and die;
     When gone, no one regrets its loss,
     Or scarce remembers that it was.

Such was Miss Weatherby:  her form lovely as nature could make it, but her mind uncultivated, her heart unfeeling, her passions impetuous, and her brain almost turned with flattery, dissipation, and pleasure; and such was the girl, whom a partial grandfather left independent mistress of the fortune before mentioned.

She had seen Temple frequently; and fancying she could never be happy without him, nor once imagining he could refuse a girl of her beauty and fortune, she prevailed on her fond father to offer the alliance to the old Earl of D——­, Mr. Temple’s father.

The Earl had received the offer courteously:  he thought it a great match for Henry; and was too fashionable a man to suppose a wife could be any impediment to the friendship he professed for Eldridge and his daughter.

Unfortunately for Temple, he thought quite otherwise:  the conversation he had just had with his father, discovered to him the situation of his heart; and he found that the most affluent fortune would bring no increase of happiness unless Lucy Eldridge shared it with him; and the knowledge of the purity of her sentiments, and the integrity of his own heart, made him shudder at the idea his father had started, of marrying a woman for no other reason than because the affluence of her fortune would enable him to injure her by maintaining in splendor the woman to whom his heart was devoted:  he therefore resolved to refuse Miss Weatherby, and be the event what it might, offer his heart and hand to Lucy Eldridge.