About this story
You bring him to your uncle's estate to grieve quietly, but Lady Audley, the new mistress of the house, keeps missing every chance to meet him, and a portrait of her stops George cold for reasons he will not explain. He walks toward the house alone one morning and does not come back.
How it opens
Your idle chambers received George Talboys on the day he returned from Australian goldfields after years abroad.
I left poverty behind to make my fortune, Robert; now I can bring Helen home in comfort.
I wrote faithfully, but no recent answer came from the wife I expected to surprise.
This newspaper gives Helen's name, age, address, and a death only days before your arrival.
The name, age, and address are hers, yet print cannot make me understand that she is gone.
You kept him from leaving alone while grief turned every plan for reunion into an accusation against time.