door.     

       “Before I open this,” I remarked, pointing to the portfolio under my arm,       “my mind is made up, sir, about one thing. If I wasn’t married already, I tell you this—I should envy you your wife.”      

       He pointed to the portfolio in his turn.     

       “Read what I have written there,” he said; “and you will understand what those false friends of mine have made me suffer to-night.”      

       The next morning my wife and I opened the portfolio, and read the strange story of George Germaine’s marriage.     

  

       The Narrative.     

  

       GEORGE GERMAINE WRITES, AND TELLS HIS OWN LOVE STORY.     

  

       CHAPTER I. GREENWATER BROAD     

       LOOK back, my memory, through the dim labyrinth of the past, through the mingling joys and sorrows of twenty years. Rise again, my boyhood’s days, by the winding green shores of the little lake. Come to me once more, my child-love, in the innocent beauty of your first ten years of life. Let us live again, my angel, as we lived in our first paradise, before sin and sorrow lifted their flaming swords and drove us out into the world.     

       The month was March. The last wild fowl of the season were floating on the waters of the lake which, in our Suffolk tongue, we called Greenwater Broad.     

       Wind where it might, the grassy banks and the overhanging trees tinged the lake with the soft green reflections from which it took its name. In a creek at the south end, the boats were kept—my own pretty sailing boat having a tiny natural harbor all to itself. In a creek at the north end stood the great trap (called a “decoy”), used for snaring the wild fowl which flocked every winter, by thousands and thousands, to Greenwater Broad.     

 Prev. P 10/227 next