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. In this state of affairs, an asylum at the manor was offered by the old cavalier, and accepted by the orphan with equal frankness, but with a most unequal sense of obligation—Sir Miles regarding his part in the transaction as a thing of course, Theresa looking on it as an action of the most exalted and extraordinary generosity.