The Cloven Foot by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

It was midwinter when Jasper Treverton died. Spring had come in all her glory -- her balmy airs and sultry noontides, stolen from summer; her variety and wealth of wood and meadow blossoms; her snowy orchard bloom, tinted with carnation; her sweetness and freshness of beauty -- a season to be welcomed and enjoyed like no other season in the changing year; a little glimpse of Paradise on earth between the destroying gales of March and the fatal thunderstorms of July. Spring had filled all the lanes and glades round Hazlehurst with perfume and colour when John Treverton reappeared in the village, as unexpectedly as if he had dropped from the skies.

Eliza Sampson was destroying the aphids on a favourite rose tree, handling them daintily with the tips of her gloved fingers, as if she loved them, when Mr. Treverton appeared at the little iron gate, carrying his own portmanteau. He, the heir of all the ages, and of what signified much more in Miss Sampson's estimation, an estate worth fourteen thousand a year.