A newcomer to the parish of Audley, Miss Lucy Graham may be an impoverished governess, but she is also kind and uncommonly beautiful. When Sir Michael Audley sets eyes upon her he finds himself in the grip of "the terrible fever called love," and even though their courtship raises many eyebrows, he soon marries her. But Sir Michael's nephew Robert begins to suspect that his new aunt is not all she seems, and his investigations into her murky past soon bring shocking secrets to the surface. A "sensation" novel featuring blackmail, bigamy, and murder, this 1862 classic made Mary Elizabeth Braddon a household name in Victorian England.