The Venetians by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Nearly three years had gone by since that fatal night in Venice. It was mid-winter, only a few days after Christmas, and Mrs. Vansittart and her son were spending their Christmas holidays within twenty miles of Merewood.

Maud Vansittart had become Maud Hartley, but before bestowing herself upon her adoring lover she had insisted that he should buy a place within reasonable distance of the house in which she had been born and reared, the home in which she could so vividly recall the image of a beloved father, and where all her happy years of girlhood had been spent with the mother she fondly loved. Sir Hubert had a fine place in the wild Yorkshire hills, half an hour's journey from Sheffield, a solid red-brick manor house in the Georgian style, built by his great-grandfather; but to that house as a home Maud would not consent to go. Her lover being rich enough to buy a second country seat as easily as some men buy a second horse, there had only remained the trouble of choosing a home that Maud could approve.