Daphne du Maurier has a talent for mystification. In Rebecca she wrote of a heroine we never saw in the flesh but whose spell was woven through every page. In My Cousin Rachel … she tells the story of an Italian widow who captivates two English bachelors, Ambrose Ashley, the elder, whom she married and subdues in Italy, and Philip, his cousin and heir, whom she comes to live with in Cornwall after Ambrose's mysterious death. (pp. 78-9)

Miss du Maurier is a caster of spells, and the first she casts is on Ambrose in Tuscany; the second upon Philip when he is drawn out of his solitary rustic state by the cries for help from abroad….

And then comes the third spell as Rachel begins to wind him around her finger as she had his cousin….

Rachel in her Italian sophistication and Philip in his naïve manhood...