Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/75

 traitorous friend, and how he finally manœuvred the latter into a duel which proved fatal to the doer of evil, and the former into a second marriage with himself. The curtain falls on a midnight adventure which proved fatal to the twice-wed wife.

Miss Corelli appears to be thoroughly at home at Naples and among the Neapolitans. Her descriptions of the place and its people are admirable. She is well-versed in the art of painting a pretty picture, only, for the purposes of her plot, to destroy it with a great ugly dab across the smiling canvas. For the story opens as daintily as you please. Left, while still a youth, an ample fortune, Count Fabio Romani dwelt "in a miniature palace of white marble, situated on a wooded height overlooking the Bay of Naples." His pleasure grounds "were fringed with fragrant groves of orange and myrtle, where hundreds of full-voiced nightingales warbled their love-melodies to the golden moon."

One can imagine that a young nobleman, who, though athletic and fond of the open air, was at the same time of a bookish and dreamy disposition, might, in such a pleasant retreat, have lingered on, a bachelor, until the discretion of the thirties would have befriended him in selecting a suitable mate. As it was, he saw but few women, and did not seek their society; but, when only a few years had