Amongst the fens of Lincolnshire—in the dreariest portion of that miserable county, where all is barren and, if not unprofitable, at least uninteresting—stood, at the period this history commences, an old-fashioned, dingy-looking mansion, tenanted by Sir Ernest Ivraine, the miser-descendant of a long line of contemptible ancestors. The house, situated near the centre of a large quagmiry park, commanded a mournful view over marshy lands, stagnant pools, and a river, so sluggish in its course that all kinds of water-plants grew and flourished on the surface; connecting it, in reality as in appearance, with the low flat fields bordering it—for they were terrestrial swamps, while it was an aqua…
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