much of the rest of the story. Originally Allan's mother's maid, and a contributor to the conflict between Allan and Ozias's fathers, she is a fortune hunter and, it turns out, a murderess. Unable to alienate Allan's affections from Miss Milroy, she settles for marrying Midwinter, having discovered his name is the same. She plots to murder Allan, or have him killed by her ex-lover, a Cuban desperado and, since she is now "Mrs. Armadale," to impersonate his widow. Allan escapes the desperado's attempt on his life—he is supposed to have drowned in a shipwreck—and returns to England. Lydia's plans are thus foiled. Her last shot is to murder Allan herself—the weapon being poison gas, the scene being a sanatorium run by a quack called Doctor Downward—but she is thwarted by her own conscience. Midwinter and Allan have switched rooms, and she can't bring herself to murder her true husband, for whom she does have genuine feelings of love. After rescuing Midwinter and writing him a farewell note, she goes into the air-poisoned room and kills herself. Allan marries Miss Milroy; Midwinter, still his best friend, becomes a writer. Some linking passages consist of letters between the various characters, or of extracts from Lydia's journal, but the great majority of the text narrates the events as they occur. The novel is enlivened by many minor characters including Mr Bashwood, an old failure of a clerk who is infatuated with the beautiful Lydia; his son, James 'Jemmy' Bashwood, a private detective; Mrs Oldershaw, an unscrupulous associate of Lydia's; the Pedgifts (father and son), Allan's lawyers; and the Rev Decimus Brock, a shrewd (but not quite shrewd enough) clergyman who brings Allan up but who is kept out of the way for much of the book. Analysis The question of whether the story is to be interpreted rationally or superstitiously, as Midwinter does, is never resolved. Catherine Peters writes in an introduction to the book that "The distortions of the plot, the violent and irrational reactions of the characters, reflect and dramatise the ways in which his readers’ perceptions were distorted by the assumptions and hypocrisies of the society in which they lived." Adaptations In the same year that it finished its serial publication, Collins wrote a dramatic version of Armadale in order to protect his rights to later stage the novel. A play by Jeffrey Hatcher based on the novel premiered