The Cardinal's snuff-box

by Henry Harland

Peter Marchdale, an English novelist of modest fame, has rented a villa on an Italian lake with a view of a castle across the river. Its owner turns out to be the Duchessa di Santangiolo, a young widow who is also, he gradually realizes, a woman he once met in London and has been in love with ever since. The courtship proceeds through a garden, a parish priest, a cardinal who is the duchess's uncle and a snuff-box that gets lost at a critical moment. Henry Harland, an American who had edited The Yellow Book, published the novel in 1900 and it became an enormous bestseller, a light, sunlit comedy of manners written against the grain of the decade's realism. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.