Five minutes more of walking brought us to the bank of the stream, and showed us the water running smoothly and slowly, tinged with the softest green luster from the reflections of trees which almost entirely arched it over.  Leaving me to admire the view at my ease, Mr. Garthwaite occupied himself with the necessary preparations for angling, baiting my hook as well as his own.  Then, desiring me to sit near him on the bank, he at last satisfied my curiosity by beginning his story.  I shall relate it in his own manner, and, as nearly as possible, in his own words.

THE ANGLER’S STORY

of

THE LADY OF GLENWITH GRANGE.

I have known Miss Welwyn long enough to be able to bear personal testimony to the truth of many of the particulars which I am now about to relate.  I knew her father, and her younger sister Rosamond; and I was acquainted with the Frenchman who became Rosamond’s husband.  These are the persons of whom it will be principally necessary for me to speak.  They are the only prominent characters in my story.

Miss Welwyn’s father died some years since.  I remember him very well—­though he never excited in me, or in any one else that I ever heard of, the slightest feeling of interest.  When I have said that he inherited a very large fortune, amassed during his father’s time, by speculations of a very daring, very fortunate, but not always very honorable kind, and that he bought this old house with the notion of raising his social position, by making himself a member of our landed aristocracy in these parts, I have told you as much about him, I suspect, as you would care to hear.  He was a thoroughly commonplace man, with no great virtues and no great vices in him.  He had a little heart, a feeble mind, an amiable temper, a tall figure, and a handsome face.  More than this need not, and cannot, be said on the subject of Mr. Welwyn’s character.

I must have seen the late Mrs. Welwyn very often as a child; but I cannot say that I remember anything more of her than that she was tall and handsome, and very generous and sweet-tempered toward me when I was in her company.  She was her husband’s superior in birth, as in everything else; was a great reader of books in all languages; and possessed such admirable talents as a musician, that her wonderful playing on the organ is remembered and talked of to this day among the old people in our country houses about here.  All her friends, as I have heard, were disappointed when she married Mr. Welwyn, rich as he was; and were afterward astonished to find her preserving the appearance, at least, of being perfectly happy with a husband who, neither in mind nor heart, was worthy of her.