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Tag: Lady Audley’s Super Secret Readalong

Lady Audley’s Super Secret Readalong, Final Installment: In which everyone needs to shut up

God, Lady Audley folds like a tailgate chair once Robert turns out to be alive. She cannot shut up with the confessions. If it were me I’d have denied everything, and I’d have gone back to my husband to emphasize Robert’s insanity. Once Robert’s committed to an insane asylum he can’t gather witnesses, can he? The only obstacle I see is Phoebe and Luke, and if Lady Audley just smothered Luke real quick (he’s all burned; he can’t fight her), Phoebe could live her life in freedom. PHOEBE! Then Sir Michael offers to kill Robert, which Lucy doesn’t take him…

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Lady Audley’s Super Secret Readalong: In which we learn that Robert reads Dumas fils even though Dumas pere is markedly superior

WHOA WHAT THERE IS ANOTHER SECRET? “I am weary of my life here, and wish, if I can, to find a new one. I go out into the world, dissevered from every link which binds me to the hateful past, to seek another home and another fortune. Forgive me if I have been fretful, capricious, changeable. You should forgive me, for you know why I have been so. You know the secret which is the key to my life.”–Helen Talboys So she already had a secret before she ever went out to be a teacher and governess? All right, Lady…

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Lady Audley’s Super Secret Readalong: In which I learn the word “conge”

It means “dismissal.” The more you know! In the first chapter of this segment of readalong, Robert gets chucked out of the Audley house for paying too much attention to Lady Audley. Here is Braddon’s representation of how the conversation went down. I, um, it sounds like Sir Audley could have minced his words a little bit more. Sir Michael Audley told his nephew that the Court was no home for him, and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a handsome nephew of eight-and-twenty. Deprived of the ability to spend all day saying…

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