A widow travels to Tuscany where she falls in love with Italy and a much younger Italian man. Her dead husband's family is angered and sends her brother-in-law to stop the affair, but it is too late a marriage has occurred. Lilia dies in childbirth and her English relatives try to obtain custody of the infant.

This 1908 novel is about a young woman in the repressed society of Edwardian England. The setting is both Italy and England. Two cousins travel to Italy. Their hotel rooms have no view and they change rooms with two other gentlemen. Sounds harmless, but at the beginning to the 20th century this was unseemly. After several plot twists the girls return to England with one of them engaged to a proper Englishman, but the man she met in Italy shows up. The story concludes with an elopement to Italy.