Kate Adamson was in love. Not such an extraordinary state for a pretty English girl, with a nice safe, middle class background. But this time it seemed to be a love doomed by its unorthodox beginnings. For Dino was an Italian and his family, the Manzini’s, one of the grandest in Florence. A family whose marriages were always carefully arranged. And Kate was not a suitable wife in the eyes of the family. Why not she could hardly understand, in spite of warnings from an English friend that she was involved in a society that had very different attitudes from her own. She and Dino had some allies, some sympathy, even from within his family. But was it enough? All they wanted was each other, but their love seemed hopeless in this world where class and privilege, religion and history were supposed to determine personal lives.