In which the reader is introduced to the faded grandeur and declining estate of Ellangowan, embodied in the weak yet good-humoured laird Godfrey Bertram and his faithful, if antiquated, pedagogue Abel Sampson. Their quiet, somewhat melancholy domestic scene, steeped in ancestral pride and contemporary misfortune, sets the tone for the social world in which the young Mannering suddenly finds himself immersed.