The first volumes books follow the love story of young Miss Milner (we are never told her first name) and her guardian Dorriforth, who begins the novel as a Roman Catholic priest.

Miss Milner is a seventeen-year-old orphan, whose father's deathbed wish entrusted her to Dorriforth's guardianship despite disapproving of Catholicism.

The Pope releases Dorriforth from his vow of chastity, and he becomes engaged to the former heir's fiancée, Miss Fenton; their relationship is tepid but prudent on both sides.

A desperate letter that Lady Elmwood writes before dying convinces him to permit Matilda to live on one of his estates, on the condition that he never sees her.

She meets her cousin, Rushbrook, her father's nephew and heir, and they begin a secret friendship, based largely around reading.

[6][8][9] These scholars note that many scenes describe characters in terms of dramatic tableaus and theatrical gestures to evoke emotion.

Nora Nachumi identifies these gestures as filling in to convey emotions that the characters are unable to express in other ways, such as when Dorriforth embraces the unconscious Matilda to communicate "a love he refuses to utter.

"[6]: 332  She argues that the emotional language of gestures allows women to resit the logocentric discourse of patriarchy and achieve a limited degree of agency.

Terry Castle further revived scholarly interest in the novel in 1986, with her book Masquerade and Civilization, which calls it “the most elegant English fiction of the century (not excluding Sterne)” and “a small neglected masterpiece.”[11]: 290