The Secret of Cavelli

1 December 1934 January 1935 in Germany

Carlo Cavelli is the professional name of a worldfamous dressage rider Rudolf Forster, who always wears a mask in his public performances and whose real name is unknown. He is about to appear in Vienna, which causes a sensation. At the dressage competition he comes to the attention of Irene von Ketterer Angela Salloker, a young woman who after a fight with her mother Camilla Gerzhofer has gone to stay with a friend. She is so impressed with him that she decides that she too will become a dressage rider. After a time she manages to obtain personal tuition from the normally unapproachable Cavelli. At first their relationship is very friendly, but when he discovers the name of his pupil, Cavelli attempts to distance himself from her. This is because his life was totally changed by a duel in which he shot and killed his best friends son, Franz, Irenes brother Paul von Hernried, an action the memory of which still tortures him. Nevertheless, after an interval, he acknowledges his great attraction to Irene and after establishing that her feelings for him are reciprocated, he decides to ask for her hand in marriage. At the same time however he also asks her to travel to London with him the very next day.Irene enthusiastically accepts and goes to her fathers to gather her papers. While she is there, she comes across a photograph of Cavelli with her brother. When she asks her father, General von Ketterer Hans Homma, about it, he tells her the story of the duel in which Count Werffen, who later called himself Cavelli, killed her brother. When the general realises from what Irene says in her distress that this is the man who wants to marry her, he fetches his pistols in order to kill him. Only Irenes threat of suicide dissuades him. ........

Source: Wikipedia