No! in the wildest dream of his reckless, unprincipled imagination, he never fancied to himself the possibility of tempting her to lawless love. In the very boldest of his audacious flights, he never would have dared to whisper one loose thought, one questionable wish in the maiden’s ear. It had, perhaps, been well he had done so—for on that instant, as the night-mists melt away and leave the firmament pure and transparent at the first glance of the great sun, the cloud of passion which obscured her mental vision would have been scattered and dispersed from her clear intellect by the first word that had flashed on her soul conviction of his baseness.
But whether the wish ever crossed his mind or not, he never gave it tongue, nor did she even once suspect it.
Still he had wooed her secretly—laying the blame on his father’s pride, his father’s haughty and high ambition, which he insisted would revolt at the bare idea of his wedding with any lady, who could not point to the quarterings of a long, noble line of ancestry; he had prevailed on her, first to conceal their love, and at length to consent to a secret marriage.
It was long, indeed, ere he could bring her to agree even to that clandestine step; nor, had her father lived but a few weeks longer, would he have done so ever.
The old man died, however, suddenly, and at the very moment when, though she knew it not, his life was most necessary to his daughter’s welfare. He was found dead in his bed, after one of those strange, mysterious seizures, to which he had for many years been subject, and during which he had appeared to be endowed with something that approached nearly to a knowledge of the future. Although, if such were, indeed, the case, it was scarce less wonderful that on the passing away of the dark fit, he seemed to have forgotten all that he had seen and enunciated of what should be thereafter.
Be this, however, as it may, he was found by his unhappy child, dead, and already cold; but with his limbs composed so naturally, and his fine benevolent features wearing so calm and peaceful an expression, that it was evident he had passed away from this world of sin and sorrow, during his sleep, without a pang or a struggle. Never did face of mortal sleeper give surer token of a happy and glorious awakening.
But he was gone, and she was alone, friendless, helpless and unprotected.
How friendless, how utterly destitute and helpless, she knew not, nor had even suspected, until the last poor relics of her only kinsman, save he who was a thousand leagues aloof on the stormy ocean, had been consigned to the earth, whence they had their birth and being. Then, when his few papers were examined, and his affairs scrutinized by his surviving, though now fast declining friend, St. Aubyn, it appeared that he had been supported only by a life-annuity, which died with himself, and that he had left nothing but the cottage at the fords, with the few acres of garden-ground, and the slender personal property on the premises, to his orphan child.
It was rendered probable by some memoranda and brief notes, found among his papers, the greater part of which were occupied by abstruse mathematical problems, and yet wilder astrological calculations, that he had looked forward to the union of his daughter with the youth whom he had brought up as his own son, and whose ample means, as well as his affection for the lovely girl, left no doubt of his power and willingness to become her protector.
What he had observed, during his sojourn at the cottage, led old Sir Miles, however, who had assumed as an act of duty, no less than of pleasure, the character of executor to his old friend, to suspect that the simple-minded sage had in some sort reckoned without his host; and that on one side, at least, there would be found insuperable objections to his views for Theresa’s future life. And in this opinion he was confirmed immediately by a conversation which he had with the poor girl, so soon as the first poignant agony of grief had passed from her mind.