ind he
was a roue. Devoted to pleasure, he had racked the goblet at an early
age; and before he was five-and-twenty procured for himself a reputation
which made all women dread and some men shun him. In the very wildest
moment of his career, when he was almost marked like Cain, he had met
Lady Aphrodite Maltravers. She was the daughter of a nobleman who justly
prided himself, in a degenerate age, on the virtue of his house. Nature,
as if in recompense for his goodness, had showered all her blessings on
his only daughter. Never was daughter more devoted to a widowed sire;
never was woman influenced by principles of purer morality.

This was the woman who inspired Sir Lucius Grafton with an ungovernable
passion. Despairing of success by any other method, conscious that,
sooner or later, he must, for family considerations, propagate future
baronets of the name of Grafton, he determined to solicit her hand. But
for him to obtain it, he was well aware, was difficult. Confident in
his person, his consummate knowledge of the female character, and
his unrivalled powers of dissimulation, Sir Lucius arranged his
dispositions. The daughter feared, the father hated him. There was
indeed much to be done; but the remembrance of a thousand triumphs
supported the adventurer. Lady Aphrodite was at length persuaded that
she alone could confirm the reformation which she alone had originated.
She yielded to a passion which her love of virtue had alone kept in
subjection. Sir Lucius and Lady Aphrodite knelt at the feet of the old
Earl. The tears of his daughter, ay! and of his future son-in-law--for
Sir Lucius knew when to weep--were too much for his kind and generous
heart. He gave them his blessing, which faltered on his tongue.

A year had not elapsed ere Lady Aphrodite woke to all the wildness of a
deluded woman. The idol on whom she had lavished all the incense of
her innocent affections became every day less like a true divinity.
At length even the ingenuity of a passion could no longer disguise the
hideous and bitter truth. She was no longer loved. She thought of her
father. Ah, what was the madness of her memory!

The agony of her mind disappointed her husband's hope of an heir, and
the promise was never renewed.

In vain she remonstrated with the being to whom she was devoted: in vain
she sought by meek endurance again to melt his heart. It was cold; it
was callous. Most women would have endeavoured to recover their lost
influe