In mind 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.
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