But even this crushing rebuff was powerless to damp the spirits and ambition of the “adventuress,” who shook the dust of Ragusa off her dainty feet, and went off to Rome, where she soon cast her spell over Sir William Hamilton, our Ambassador there, who gave her the warmest hospitality.  “For several days,” we learn, “she reigns like a Queen in the salon of the Ambassador, out of whose penchant for beautiful women she has no difficulty in wiling a passport that enables her to enter the most exclusive circles of Roman society.”

In Rome she lays aside her regal trappings, and wins the respect of all by her unostentatious living and her prodigal charities.  She becomes a favourite at the Vatican; Cardinals do homage to her goodness, with perhaps a pardonable eye to her beauty.  But behind the brave and pious front she thus shows to the world her heart is growing more heavy day by day.  Poverty is at her door in the guise of importunate creditors, her servants are clamouring for overdue wages, and consumption, which for long has threatened her, now shows its presence in hectic cheeks and a hacking cough.  Fortune seems at last to have abandoned her; and it requires all her courage to sustain her in this hour of darkness.

In her extremity she appeals to Sir William Hamilton for a loan, much as a Queen might confer a favour on a subject, and Hamilton, pleased to be of service to so fair and pious a lady, sends her letter to his Leghorn banker, Mr John Dick, with instructions to arrange the matter.

* * * * *

While the Princess Aly was practising piety and cultivating Cardinals in Rome, with an empty purse and a pain-racked body to make a mockery of her claim to a crown, away in distant Russia Catherine II. was nursing a terrible revenge on the woman who had dared to usurp her position and threaten her throne.  The succession of revolutions, at which she had at first smiled scornfully, had now roused the tigress in her.  She would show the world that she was no woman to be trifled with, and the first victim of her vengeance should be that brazen Princess who dared to masquerade as “Elizabeth II.”

She sent imperative orders to her trusted and beloved Orloff, fresh from his crushing defeat of the Turkish fleet, to seize her at any cost, even if he had to raze Ragusa to the ground; and these orders she knew would be executed to the letter.  For was not Orloff the man whose strong hands had strangled her husband and placed the crown on her head; also her most devoted slave?  He was, it is true, the biggest scoundrel (as he was also one of the handsomest men) in Europe, a man ready to stoop to any infamy, and thus the best possible tool for such an infamous purpose; but he was also her greatest admirer, eager to step into the place of “chief favourite” from which his brother Gregory had just been dismissed.