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. Pietro Ghisleri begins: The relation of two stepsisters is unusual. When the Honorable Mrs. Carlyon came to Rome twenty years ago, a young widow and the mother of a little girl named Laura, she did not foresee the complications which her second marriage was to produce. She was a good woman in her way, and if she had guessed what it would mean to be the stepmother of Adele Braccio she might have hesitated before marrying Camillo of that name, commonly known as the Prince of Gerano. For the Prince had also been married before, and his first wife had left him this one child, Adele, who was only a year and a half older than little Laura Carlyon.