The general theme is age-old, being not different from the themes of most other novels in that respect.

A half-idiotic spendthrift (he ends as very nearly an actual idiot) not merely wastes his own property but practically embezzles that of his wife and daughter; the wife dies and the daughter is left alone with an extravagant establishment, a father practically _non compos_, not a penny in her pocket after she has paid his doctor, and a selfish baronet-uncle who will do less than nothing to help her.

She has loved half unconsciously, and been half consciously loved by, a soldier cousin or quasi-cousin: but he is in the Peninsular War.

Absolutely no help presents itself but that of a Mr.Danby, a conveyancer, who, in some way not very consonant with the usual etiquette of his profession, has been mixed up with her father's affairs--a man middle-aged, apparently dry as his own parchments, and quite unversed in society.

He helps her clumsily but lavishly: and her uncle forces her to accept his hand as the only means of saving her father from jail first and an asylum afterwards.