In plan and mechanism the story was one of a common romantic type, neither better nor worse than hundreds of others of which the literary archives of the first half of the present century are full.

It required all the aid that fine literary treatment could give it to raise it above the level of vulgar melodrama and turn it into tragedy.
But fortune had been kind to it; the subject had been already handled in the Italian sketch with delicacy and a true tragic insight, and Edward Wallace had brought all the resources of a very evenly-trained and critical mind to bear upon his task.

It could hardly have been foreseen that he would be attracted by the subject, but once at work upon it he had worked with enthusiasm.
The curtain drew up on the great hall of the Villena Palace.

Everything that antiquarian knowledge could do had been brought to bear upon the surroundings of the scene; the delicate tilework of the walls and floor, the leather hangings, the tapestries, the carved wood and brass work of a Spanish palace of the fifteenth century, had been copied with lavish magnificence; and the crowded expectant house divided its attention and applause during the first scene between the beauty and elaboration of its setting and the play of the two tolerable actors who represented Elvira's father and the rival of Macias, Fernan Perez.
Fernan Perez, having set the intrigue on foot which is to wreck the love of Macias and Elvira, had just risen from his seat, when Wallace, who was watching the stage in a torment of mingled satisfaction and despair, touched Madame de Chateauvieux's arm.
'_Now_!' he said.

'That door to the left.' Kendal, catching the signal, rose from his seat behind Madame de Chateauvieux and bent forward.