Beautiful eighteen-year-old waif Felicita Galv?o is penniless, almost starving and all alone in the world when the Duchesse de Monreuil finds her desperately trying to sell her needlework at the Grand Hotel in Lisbon. Struck by Felicita's deep blue eyes - so different from those of any Portuguese girl she has ever seen - she offers to buy everything the girl has to sell and offers her a ride home in her carriage. Something about this young beauty reminds the Duchesse of herself at the same age, when she first found the love of her life, Juan, the Marques de Oliveira Vasconles - said to be "the most handsome and the most exciting gentleman in the whole of Portugal". Still deeply bitter over the way Juan abandoned her to marry another "whose blood is the equal of mine", the Duchesse suddenly sees a way use this young innocent to wreak revenge. Moving Felicita into her rented villa, she persuades her to impersonate the Duchesse's niece the Comtesse Felicity de Monreuil and in that guise meet the current Marques Alvaro de Oliveira Vasconles. The Duchesse means to break the heart of her lost love's son as hers was broken - but it seems that love or Fate means to deny her vengeance.