immediately sprang into fame as an authoress, combining a
graphic style with keen analysis of character, and exceptional
ingenuity in the construction of a plot of tantalising
complexities and DRAMATIC _DÉNOUEMENT_. The book passed
through many editions, and there was an immediate demand for
other stories by the gifted authoress. That demand was met
with an industry and resource rarely equalled. Every year
since, Miss Braddon, who throughout retained her maiden as her
pen-name, furnished the reading public with one, and for a
long period two romances of absorbing interest.


_I.--The Second Lady Audley_


SIR MICHAEL AUDLEY was fifty-six years of age, and had married a second
wife nine months before. For seventeen years he had been a widower with
an only child--Alicia, now eighteen. Lady Audley had come into the
neighbourhood from London, in response to an advertisement in the
"Times," as a governess in the family of Mr. Dawson, the village
surgeon. Her accomplishments were brilliant and numerous. Everyone, high
and low, loved, admired, and praised her, and united in declaring that
Lucy Graham was the sweetest girl that ever lived. Sir Michael Audley
expressed a strong desire to be acquainted with her. A meeting was
arranged at the surgeon's house, and that day Sir Michael's fate was
sealed. One misty June evening Sir Michael, sitting opposite Lucy Graham
at the window of the surgeon's little drawing-room, spoke to her on the
subject nearest his heart.

"I scarcely think," he said, "there is a greater sin, Lucy, than that of