The Black Robe

A duel leaves Lewis Romayne alive, wealthy, and unable to escape a dead man's cry in Wilkie Collins's The Black Robe. Visiting Boulogne, Romayne is goaded into fighting after a card-table dispute. He never wanted the contest, yet accidentally kills the substitute opponent sent against him. The victim's brother screams at the death, and that sound follows Romayne back to Vange Abbey.

In London, personal vulnerability becomes an opportunity for institutional ambition. Romayne meets Stella Eyrecourt and attracts the attention of Father Benwell, spiritual adviser to the Catholic Loring family. Benwell wants to convert Romayne partly because Vange Abbey once belonged to the church. He recruits the younger priest Arthur Penrose, expecting religious counsel to advance the plan.

Penrose complicates the scheme by becoming Romayne's genuine friend. Stella's love, Romayne's guilt, and Benwell's designs create competing claims on a man seeking relief from trauma. Collins uses letters and shifting testimony to connect spiritual authority with property, marriage, and manipulation. The central suspense asks whether care can remain sincere when conversion carries an inheritance motive, and whether Romayne can distinguish friendship and faith from strategies built around his haunted conscience.