Then had followed a hasty removal, and they had left their comfortable home in London and had come to live in Naples.
After a dreary time in a second-rate Italian boarding-house she had been sent to the Villa Camellia, and all link with England was lost and broken.

No aunt or cousins ever wrote to her, and the earlier portion of her life seemed a period that was utterly ended.
So far Lorna had never had the courage to make any inquiries into the why and wherefore of this unsatisfactory state of affairs.

If a question rose to her lips the sight of her father's forbidding face effectually curbed her curiosity.

That some tragedy had been concealed from her she was positive.

The suspicion, nay the absolute certainty, was sufficient to place a division between herself and other girls.