The Venetians

A late sensation novel from 1893, written when Mary Elizabeth Braddon had long been one of the most widely read authors in England. During the noise and disguise of a Venice Carnival, the English gentleman John Vansittart kills a man in a sudden quarrel and slips away home, believing the deed buried with him abroad. Three years on, settled in England and in love with the gentle Eve Marchant, he learns that she is bound to his victim in a way that turns his private guilt into a threat to everything he wants. Braddon keeps the pressure on the conscience rather than the courtroom, tracing how one violent moment refuses to stay in the past. Free PDF and EPUB editions can be downloaded here.