Wogan persuades James to allow him undertake a daring rescue mission, and with the help of three of his closest friends, Gaydon, Misset and O'Toole, he succeeds in releasing Clementina in the face of significant resistance from soldiers and espionage agents loyal to the emperor.

Wogan is dispatched to Rome to bring Maria Vittoria back, the two women quickly become friends, and Clementina consents to be married.

The idea for the novel was suggested to Mason by his friend Andrew Lang who had been working on the historical material, including a surviving account by Charles Wogan himself.

According to Green, when the author returned to the genre more than thirty years later in Fire Over England he had progressed far from this earlier work and was able to succeed with the "higher type of historical fiction" that can be dimly glimpsed here.

[4] A 1901 review in The Globe called the book one of Mason's best romances, written in the true spirit of adventure, exhaling the atmosphere of the times, and holding the attention throughout.