[3] The opera aficionado James Elliot had been a regular visitor to Grest Park, the English country house owned by his friend the music-loving Lord Scoble, Earl of Linchcombe.

Elliot advises that the musical training started by his father should continue, but Frances and her cousin Henry Scoble are reluctant to take the boy's gift seriously.

A year later, on a visit to Naples, Elliot comes across an appreciative crowd that has gathered to listen to a young singer he recognises immediately as Julian.

He had been taken to a hovel high in the hills where his captors, hoping to make even more money from their prisoner, had persuaded him to sing to them: "But he had sung his sweet song too well.

"[4] When Julian reads a report of Henry Scoble's new title, he smells "the musk and amber of revenge" and decides that he must dedicate himself to his singing.

Her lover is a member of the Council of Ten, a body empowered to impose punishments within the Republic of Venice, and after a public concert Marelli is suddenly arrested and faces the prospect of twelve years imprisonment without trial.

Afraid that his house is being watched, Elliot arranges to take a few days' holiday, travelling publicly by barge in the style expected of a grand English gentleman.

To her, a quick death would have been too easy for the boy, and she had arranged his kidnapping and sale in the expectation that he would fail as a soprano and that he would be forced to live as an outcast before dying in penury.