F. Marion Crawford was one of the more famous authors in the English-speaking world at the time of his death in 1909. He wrote over forty novels, most of which were in the style of disposable romances popular at the time. He also wrote stories of the horror and occult, which are generally the ones for which he is remembered today. Don Orsino begins: Don Orsino Saracinesca is of the younger age and lives in the younger Rome, with his father and mother, under the roof of the vast old palace which has sheltered so many hundreds of Saracinesca in peace and war, but which has rarely in the course of the centuries been the home of three generations at once during one and twenty years.