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.