However, I was struck with her exceeding loveliness and amused by the
vivacity of her manners; moreover, my vanity was excited by the hope
of distancing all my competitors for the smiles of the young beauty.
Accordingly I laid myself out to please, and neglected none of those
subtle and almost secret attentions which, of all flatteries, are the
most delicate and successful; and I succeeded. Caroline loved me with
all the earnestness and devotion which characterize the love of woman.
It never occurred to her that I was only trifling with those
affections which it seemed so ardently my intention to win. She knew
that my fortune was large enough to dispense with the necessity of
fortune with my wife, and in birth she would have equalled men of
greater pretensions to myself; added to this, long adulation had made
her sensible though not vain of her attractions, and she listened with
a credulous ear to the insinuated flatteries I was so well accustomed
to instil.

Never shall I forget--no, though I double my present years--the shock,
the wildness of despair with which she first detected the selfishness
of my homage; with which she saw that I had only mocked her trusting
simplicity; and that while she had been lavishing the richest
treasures of her heart before the burning altars of Love, my idol had
been Vanity and my offerings deceit. She tore herself from the
profanation of my grasp; she shrouded herself from my presence. All
interviews with me were rejected; all my letters returned to me
unopened; and though, in the repentance of my heart, I entreated, I
urged her to accept vows that were no longer insincere, her pride
became her punishment, as well as my own. In a moment of bitter and
desperate feeling; she accepted the offers of another, and made the
marriage bond a fatal and irrevocable barrier to our reconciliation
and union.