She married an abusive and unfaithful fortune hunter, and this ended in a divorce.
She failed and the information leaked to another hotel guest, Pierre Philip Eugene de Gendre.
[4][5] Pierre Philip Eugene de Gendre, who was a member of the king of Naples' Swiss guard, devoted his time to courting Fussell and arranged that he would stay at the same hotel in Florence.
One of his purchases was to buy a title from the pope so she became Countess de Gendre.
Divorce proceedings followed an episode in May 1870 where her husband arranged for her to be kidnapped and brought back to his home.
[1] The details of the divorce includes not only her abduction, but also her husband's attempts to sexually abuse their servants, his adulteries and that he had persuaded her to fake a pregnancy so that he could claim to have a son.