Lady Audley’s Secret: Volume 3, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Sir Michael sleeps peacefully and Lady Audley feels a brief moment of pity for him. But her pity is mostly selfish, because she knows he will be destroyed if Robert exposes her secrets. Then Lady Audley thinks about “her lovely face, her bewitching manner, her arch smile, her low musical laugh” and feels triumphant. She knows Sir Michael will never fall out of love with her charms.

Despite her confidence in Sir Michael, Lady Audley still fears that Robert will expose her unless some calamity silences him. She stops suddenly. Then she walks to her dressing table and composes herself in the mirror. She tells Phoebe they will go together to pay the landlord at the Castle Inn. She ignores Phoebe’s protests, and says she wants to make sure the money goes directly to the landlord. They will sneak out of the house so that servants do not see them.

Lady Audley sends Phoebe on ahead and goes to get dresses to go out. An “unnatural colour still burnt like a flame in her cheeks, the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes.” The narrator says one can’t even fully describe the intensity of Lady Audley’s agony.

After 10 minutes, Lady Audley goes to sneak out through a window in the breakfast-room. In the cheerfully decorated room, she passes Alicia’s drawing supplies. Lady Audley thinks how happy Alicia would be at her stepmother’s defeat. Leaving all the internal doors open so she can find her way back through the house, she climbs out the window.

Outside, Lady Audley feels as if she is running away. She thinks she could run away, like George did, but she has no money and she can’t live in poverty again. She would die from the struggle, as her mother died. She says she will not go back to that life and goes to meet Phoebe. Together they walk to Castle Inn.

Lady Audley walks with an intense courage “born out of her great despair.” She notices a light in one window of the Castle Inn, where Luke must be still awake. Lady Audley assumes Robert is asleep in one of the unlit rooms. Lady Audley confirms with Phoebe that Robert is staying at the Castle Inn that night.

Wind blows heavily upon the inn. Luke sits in his chambers drinking with the landlord. Luke’s intoxication increases his brutal nature and slurs his speech. With mechanical gestures, Lady Audley enters the room with Phoebe and announces that she has come to settle the debts herself. Luke rudely tells her that she could have given the money to Phoebe. He continues to insult Lady Audley until she turns towards him and stuns him with her beauty. Her wind-blown hair resembles flames and her eyes look like those of “an angry mermaid.”

Lady Audley pays Luke and Phoebe offers to walk her home. Lady Audley agrees but says that she feels faint and needs water. She then asks Phoebe where Robert’s room is. Phoebe says he is in Room #3, which is next to their own. Lady Audley says she will go to Phoebe’s room to use her water basin. She tells Phoebe to wait behind and make sure Luke doesn’t follow.

Lady Audley takes a lit candle and goes down the hallway. She finds Room #3 and sees the key in the door. Almost in a trance, she turns the key twice, double locking the door. She goes into Phoebe’s room next door and dips her hair in the water basin. Then she notices the cheap tapestries Phoebe has hung on the walls. Lady Audley smiles. She carefully places the lit candle close to a mirror’s muslin curtains.

Phoebe is waiting by the inn’s front door when Lady Audley arrives. Phoebe is alarmed when she realizes Lady Audley doesn’t have the candle, but Lady Audley says the wind blew it out so she left it behind. Despite the harshness of the winter night, Lady Audley hurries away with Phoebe.

When they are less than a mile away from Audley Court, Phoebe spots the fire off in the distance. Phoebe is horrified, certain it’s the Castle Inn. She fears for Luke and Robert inside. Then she remembers Lady Audley’s quarrels with Luke and Robert and begs Lady Audley to say that she did not deliberately set the fire. Lady Audley says Phoebe is mad, since she doesn’t even know for sure that the fire is coming from the Castle Inn. Lady Audley leaves Phoebe kneeling in the road.