A novel of a mysterious castle, unknown treasure, romance, and duplicity from the Victorian-era author of Lilith. “One of Mac Donald’s very best.”—Richard Reis, author of George Mac Donald’s Fiction This dark realistic novel is somewhat puzzling in Mac Donald’s corpus of more uplifting works. Some of its disconcerting themes grew out of George and Louisa Mac Donald’s friendship with author John Ruskin during a troubled time in the latter’s life. Some of the descriptive portions contained within this narrative, especially of the Swiss Alps, are among Mac Donald’s finest. As Michael Phillips writes in the introduction, “Though the novel draws vividly on imagery from Mac Donald’s trip to Switzerland in 1865, and contains passages of great narrative power, it is also of interest for characterizations thought by some to have emerged out of the circumstances of Ruskin’s involvement with Rose La Touche. As a result, commentators and analysts through the years have read into the work all manner of Freudian, Jungian, and sexual themes. Readers, of course, will see in it what they choose to see.”