In the ensuing scuffle, John grabs a dagger he had just purchased as a souvenir, and stabs his rival, who dies instantly.

He is enchanted by the beautiful Eve and resolves to marry her, despite the fact that her dissolute father has squandered the family's fortunes.

To assuage his guilt, John pays for a spacious flat for Lisa, her aunt, and the young child she bore after her lover's death, and hires a music teacher to train her voice.

John and Eve's life of wedded bliss is darkened by the illness of her little sister Peggy, a victim of consumption, who dies in spite of a medical evacuation to Cannes.

Like her mother and sister, she develops consumption, and travels to Italy, eventually settling in Venice at the Hotel Danieli, where the police help her find her brother's grave.

Braddon's depiction of contemporary Venice has been compared to Ann Radcliffe's in The Mysteries of Udolpho as both a feminine object of male desire, and a source of women's artistic autonomy.