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