As soon as his eyes opened they rested on the police agent, sitting quietly by the bedside, with a loaded pistol in his hand.  Monbrun knew immediately that he was discovered; but he never for an instant lost the self-possession for which he was famous.  He said he wished to have five minutes allowed him to deliberate quietly in bed, whether he should resist the French authorities on English ground, and so gain time by obliging the one Government to apply specially to have him delivered up by the other—­or whether he should accept the terms officially offered to him by the agent, if he quietly allowed himself to be captured.  He chose the latter course—­it was suspected, because he wished to communicate personally with some of his convict associates in France, whose fraudulent gains were in his keeping, and because he felt boastfully confident of being able to escape again, whenever he pleased.  Be his secret motives, however, what they might, he allowed the agent to conduct him peaceably from the Grange; first writing a farewell letter to poor Rosamond, full of heartless French sentiment and glib sophistries about Fate and Society.  His own fate was not long in overtaking him.  He attempted to escape again, as it had been expected he would, and was shot by the sentinel on duty at the time.  I remember hearing that the bullet entered his head and killed him on the spot.

My story is done.  It is ten years now since Rosamond was buried in the churchyard yonder; and it is ten years also since Miss Welwyn returned to be the lonely inhabitant of Glenwith Grange.  She now lives but in the remembrances that it calls up before her of her happier existence of former days.  There is hardly an object in the old house which does not tenderly and solemnly remind her of the mother, whose last wishes she lived to obey; of the sister, whose happiness was once her dearest earthly care.  Those prints that you noticed on the library walls Rosamond used to copy in the past time, when her pencil was often guided by Ida’s hand.  Those music-books that you were looking over, she and her mother have played from together through many a long and quiet summer’s evening.  She has no ties now to bind her to the present but the poor child whose affliction it is her constant effort to lighten, and the little peasant population around her, whose humble cares and wants and sorrows she is always ready to relieve.  Far and near her modest charities have penetrated among us; and far and near she is heartily beloved and blessed in many a laborer’s household.  There is no poor man’s hearth, not in this village only, but for miles away from it as well, at which you would not be received with the welcome given to an old friend, if you only told the cottagers that you knew the Lady of Glenwith Grange!

PROLOGUE TO THE FIFTH STORY.