The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Walter Hartright is a young drawing master who gets his break when he is recommended to teach water colours to the two young ladies under the care of a Mr Fairlie of Limmeridge House, but on his way back to London from his mother's house across Hampstead Heath early in the morning he encounters the eponymous woman in white who has an unspoken connection to Limmeridge, and so she, he and a vividly drawn cast of characters are drawn into a complex dance of deception, fraud, love and powerplay. Held me and drove me on until the last page.