<p>Waif-like beauty Elvina is tiny and immature after years of malnourishment and indeed she looks far younger than her seventeen years.<br>Weak, however, she is not. Hardened by years of beatings and abuse at the hands of her half-crazed Portuguese stepmother and sickened by her father's constant drunken behaviour, Elvina is determined to escape Lisbon and flee to her native England.<br>Despite the dangers of the Napoleonic War, which is ra...