_V.--My Lady Tells the Truth_

Lady Audley next day was under the dominion of a terrible restlessness.
Towards the dinner hour she walked in the quadrangle. In the dusk she
lost all self-control when a figure approached. Her knees sank under her
and she dropped to the ground. It was Robert Audley who helped her to
rise and then led her into the library. In a pitiless voice he called
her the incendiary of the fire at the inn. Fortunately, he had changed
his room, and escaped being burnt to death, saving, at the same time,
Luke Marks. The day was now past, he insisted, for mercy, after last
night's deed of horror; and she should no longer pollute the Court with
her presence.

"Bring Sir Michael," she cried, "and I will confess everything!"

And so the confession was made. Briefly stated, it was that as a little
child, in a Hampshire coast village, when she asked where her mother
was, the answer always was that that was a secret. In a fit of passion
the foster-mother told her that her own mother was a madwoman in an
asylum many miles away. Afterwards, she learned that the madness was a
hereditary disease, and she was instructed to keep the secret because it
might affect her injuriously in after life. Then she detailed the story
of her life until her marriage with Sir Michael Audley, justifying that
on the ground that she had a right to believe her first husband was
dead. In the sunshine of love at Audley Court she felt, for the first
time in her life, the miseries of others, and took pleasure in acts of
kindness.

In an Essex paper she read of the return of her first husband to
England. Knowing his character, she thought that unless he could be
induced to believe she was dead, he would never abandon his search for
her. Again she became mad. In collusion with her father she induced a
Mrs. Plowson in Southampton, who had a daughter in the last stage of
consumption, to pass off that daughter as Mrs. George Talboys, and
removed her to Ventnor, Isle of Wight, with her own little boy schooled
to call her "mamma." There she died in a fortnight, was buried as Mrs.
George Talboys, and the advertisement of the death was inserted in the
"Times" two days before her husband's arrival in England.

Sir Michael could hear no more. He and his daughter Alicia departed that
evening for the Continent. Next day, Dr. Mosgrave, a mental specialist,
arrived from London. He was fully informed of the history of Lady
Audley, examined her, a