'Lady Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair'. Robert Audley is pleased for his uncle when he brings home a pretty young bride, even though her past is shrouded in mystery. But when his old friend Talboys is treated strangely by Lady Audley, then goes suddenly missing, Robert has no choice but to begin investigations. Lady Audley's Secret epitomized the scandalous sensation fiction of the 1860s. Lady Audley herself, a beautiful woman with a mysterious past, embodied the concerns of the age with the rise of the middle class and with madness and morality.