Braddon, Mary Elizabeth: Vixen, Volume I. V1. 14 Nov 2009
 

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1837 – 4 February 1915) was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret.


Excerpt
The moon had newly risen, a late October moon, a pale almost imperceptible crescent, above the dark pine spires in the thicket through which Roderick Vawdrey came, gun in hand, after a long day’s rabbit-shooting. It was not his nearest way home, but he liked the broad clearing in the pine wood, which had a ghostly look at dusk, and was so still and lonely that the dart of a squirrel through the fallen leaves was a startling event.