Slighted love or, At her heart's expense

About the book

Italy has grown up traveling with her mother, aware that strangers seem to recognize a dark story she has never been told. At seventeen she learns that her father was murdered and that her mother, though acquitted, remained condemned by public opinion. The family wealth passed elsewhere, leaving the two women exposed to both material insecurity and persistent suspicion. Italy's loyalty gives the old mystery urgent personal meaning as she enters a world of possible protectors, interested relations, and uncertain courtship. Miller combines the search for vindication with the heightened emotion and peril of romantic melodrama. The central pressure comes from the difference between a legal judgment and a social reputation, and from a daughter's determination to discover why the past continues to govern her present.

• Reputation and justice
• Family loyalty
• Love and suspicion

Why read it

The mother's acquittal without social acceptance gives the heroine's search a clear emotional and moral stake.

English text of the Street & Smith edition