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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.
But realism vanishes when Idalia begins her romantic flight from place to place and from lover to lover. The incidents of romance crowd fast around her. When in man's clothes she is loved by a woman who takes her for what she seems, and by the woman's husband who knows her for what she is, the reader cannot help recalling a similar Gordian love-knot in Sidney's "Arcadia."
The arbitress of the passions indeed wrote nothing to compare in popularity with "Robinson Crusoe," but before 1740 her "Love in Excess" ran through as many editions as "Moll Flanders" and its abridgments, while "Idalia: or, the Unfortunate Mistress" had been reprinted three times separately and twice with her collected novels before a reissue of Defoe's "Fortunate Mistress" was undertaken.
The first of these is "Idalia: or, the Unfortunate Mistress" , the story of a young Venetian beauty like Lasselia, her charms can only be imagined not described whose varied amorous adventures carry her over most of Italy. She is sought by countless suitors, among them the base Florez, whom her father promptly forbids the house.
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.
But he had seen the Idalia not three hours before, safe and speeding. Suppose the crew had mutinied and imprisoned the passengers below, and the message was one begging for succour! But, premising such an improbable outrage, would the agitated captives have taken the pains to fill four pages of note-paper with carefully penned arguments to their rescue.
"You know YOU like to hear about nice clothes, Eva, and Wanda's were simply gorgeous; white velvet and a rope of pearls is one costume; gray velvet and a silver girdle another; and Idalia was all a 'shower of perfumed laces, and scarlet and gold satin mask dresses, or primrose silk with violets, so lovely! I do revel in 'em!"
Idalia herself was "a lovely Inconsiderate" of Venice, who escaped in a "Gondula" up "the River Brent," and set all Vicenza by the ears through her "stock of Haughtiness, which nothing could surmount."
If we may judge by the number and frequency of editions, most of the indefatigable scribbler's tales found a ready sale, while the best of them, such as "Idalia" , "The Fatal Secret" , "The Mercenary Lover" , "The Fruitless Enquiry" and "Philidore and Placentia" , gained for her not a little applause. Nor was the young adventuress in letters unhailed by literary men.
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