She is sought by countless suitors, among them the base Florez, whom her father promptly forbids the house.  Idalia’s vanity is piqued at the loss of a single adorer, and more from perverseness than from love she continues to correspond with him.  He makes no further use of her condescension than to boast of her favors, until at the command of his patron, Don Ferdinand, he induces Idalia to make an assignation with him.  Ferdinand meets her and not without difficulty at length effects her ruin.  Her lover’s friend, Henriquez, in conducting her to a place of safety in Padua, becomes himself the victim of her charms, quarrels with Ferdinand, and slays him and is slain.  Henriquez’ brother, Myrtano, next succeeds as Idalia’s adorer, but learning that he is about to make an advantageous marriage, she secretly decamps.  In her flight the very guide turns out to be a noble lover in disguise.  When she escapes from him in a ship bound for Naples, the sea-captain pays her crude court, but just in time to save her from his embraces the ship is captured by Barbary corsairs—­commanded by a young married couple.  Though the heroine is in peasant dress, she is treated with distinction by her captors.  Her history moves them to tears, and they in turn are in the midst of relating to her the involved story of their courtship, when the vessel is wrecked by a gale.  Borne ashore on a plank, Idalia is succored by cottagers, and continues her journey in man’s clothes.  She is loved by a lady, and by the lady’s husband, who turns out to be her dear Myrtano.  Their felicity is interrupted by the jealousy of Myrtano’s wife, who appeals to the Pope and forces the lovers to separate by his order.  Idalia leads a miserable life, persecuted by all the young gallants of Rome.  One day she sees Florez, the first cause of all her misfortunes, pass the window, and with thoughts bent on revenge sends him a billet, which he carries to his master.  Myrtano keeps the appointment, muffled in a cloak, and Idalia stabs him by mistake.  Overcome by remorse, she dies by the same knife.

The motivation of the heroine at the beginning of the story, as Miss Morgan has pointed out,[13]is more elaborate than usual in Haywoodian romance.  To show a young girl’s vanity teasing her into an intrigue required a more delicate appreciation of the passions than the stock situations in love stories afforded.  Obliged to draw upon her own resources, Mrs. Haywood handled the incidents with a niceness that could hardly have been expected from the author of “Love in Excess.”  Her sense for vraisemblance protected her from many absurdities, though not from all.  For instance, when Idalia to preserve herself from the importunities of Ferdinand employs the same threat of stabbing herself that Clarissa Harlowe in similar circumstances holds over Lovelace, the Italian heroine very naturally tries first to stab her seducer.  But realism vanishes when Idalia begins her romantic flight from place to place and