Lady Audley's Secret is a Victorian sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It follows beautiful, charming Lady Audley, whose marriage to wealthy Sir Michael Audley conceals dark secrets, while his nephew Robert Audley investigates a friend's disappearance. A gripping story of ambition, identity and respectable appearances, worth listening to for its mystery and psychological tension.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET By Mary Elizabeth Braddon CHAPTER I. LUCY. It lay down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted; for there was no thorough-fare, and unless you were going to the Court you had no business there at all. At the end of this avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, with a stupid, bewildering clock, which had only one hand—and which jumped straight from one hour to the next—and was therefore always in extremes. Through this arch you walked straight into the gardens of Audley Court. A smooth lawn lay before you, dotted with groups of rhododendrons, which grew in more perfection here than anywhere else in the county. To the right there were the kitchen gardens, the fish-pond, and an orchard bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy, yellow stonecrop, and dark moss. To the left there was a broad graveled walk, down which, years ago, when the place had been a convent, the quiet nuns had
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