Mary Elizabeth Braddon acted on the stage under a false name to support her mother, then wrote eighty novels — and this is the one that made her fortune and defined the sensation genre. A lovely governess with no past marries a rich baronet, and her new nephew begins to wonder what became of the friend who vanished the very week she arrived. Bigamy, arson, and a body down a well, all in the respectable drawing rooms readers actually lived in. This edition presents the complete and unabridged novel, newly typeset and illustrated with 50 full-page color plates.
