ny communication with me, and that my yearly allowance
was stopped.

"I sold out my commission, thinking that before the money I got for it
was exhausted I should be sure to drop into something. I took my darling
to Italy, lived in splendid style, and then, when there was nothing left
but a couple of hundred pounds, we came back to England and boarded with
my wretched father-in-law, who fleeced us finely. I went to London and
tried in vain to get employment; and on my return, my little girl burst
into a storm of lamentations, blaming me for the cruel wrong of marrying
her if I could give her nothing but poverty and misery. Her tears and
reproaches drove me almost mad. I ran out of the house, rushed down to
the pier, intending, after dark, to drop quietly into the water and end
all.

"While I sat smoking two men came along, and began to talk of the
Australian gold-diggings and the great fortunes that were to be made
there in a short time. I got into conversation with them, and learned
that a ship sailed from Liverpool for Melbourne in three days. The
thought flashed on me that that was better than the water. I returned
home, crept upstairs, and wrote a few hurried lines which told her that
I never loved her better than now when I seemed to desert her; that I
was going to try my fortune in a new world; that if I succeeded I should
come back to bring her plenty and happiness, but if I failed I should
never look upon her face again. I kissed her hand and the baby once, and
slipped out of the room. Three nights after I was out at sea, bound for
Melbourne, a steerage passenger with a digger's tools for my baggage,
and seven shillings in my pocket. After three and a half years of hard
and bitter struggles on the goldfields, at last I struck it rich,
realised twenty thousand pounds, and a fortnight later I took my passage
for England. All this time I had never communicated with my wife, but
the moment fortune came, I wrote, telling her I should be in England
almost as soon as my letter, and giving her an address at a coffee-house
in London."

That same evening Phoebe Marks, maid to Lady Audley, invited her cousin
and sweetheart, Luke Marks, a farm labourer with ambitions to own a
public-house, to survey the wonders of Audley Court, including my lady's
private apartments and her jewel-box. During the inspection, by
accident, a knob in the framework of the jewel-box was pushed, and a
secret drawer sprang out There were neither