Lord Torrendale had entered life with good principles and respectable abilities, unaccompanied by those keen sensibilities and perceptions, which, according as they are directed, lead their possessor to glory and happiness, or to misery and disgrace. Having been commissioned by his father, to fall in love with a young lady, whose estate was near his own of Strathallan, in Scotland, he had complied with the injunction, so far as making formal proposals, which were as formally accepted; and he found himself the unconscious possessor of a treasure, in the person of a lady, whose mind was of that superior temper, which he could not appreciate, and whose form, though lovely, was not the ‘kind of loveliness calculated to touch his heart.’

Some unforeseen losses, and a dispute concerning a considerable part of her property, which altogether made her possessions fall much short of what was supposed to be its original value, were the causes to which, some grave enquirers ascribed the increasing indifference of her lord. But, though not splendidly liberal, he was far from a mercenary character. Be that as it may, the lovely Rosa of Strathallan (for that was then her title) fell a victim to that general neglect, of which she hardly knew how to complain, though she suffered so exquisitely from its effects. Knowing that her malady was seated in the mind, she declined to avail herself of the vain privilege of rank and wealth, of rambling in search of that health, which happiness alone could restore; and breathed her last at the northern seat, of which her husband left her such undisturbed possession; leaving her resemblance in a lovely boy, then four years old, for whose / sake his Lordship determined to keep free from any other engagement.

Having little that was prepossessing in his appearance, and being naturally of a disposition cold, timid, and reserved, the Viscount (now Earl of Torrendale) was suffered to keep his resolution, without being much molested by the snares of high-born beauty.