The Venetians by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

If there were blue skies now and then in a London February, what was February along the Riviera but the most exquisite springtime? And perhaps on all that favoured shore, Cannes has the richest firstfruits of the fertile year, for it is then that the mimosas are in their glory, and the hill of Californie is a yellow fairyland, an enchanted region, where all the trees drop golden rain.

Eve and her lover husband were at Cannes. Delicious as the place was at this season, and new as the shores of the Mediterranean were to Eve, she and her husband had not come there for their own pleasure. They had come at the advice of the doctors -- to give Peggy a chance. That was what it had come to. Peggy's only chance of living through the winter was to be found in the south. One doctor had suggested Capri, another Sorrento; but for some unexplained reason Vansittart objected to Italy, and then Mentone or Cannes had been talked about; and finally Cannes was decided upon, for medical reasons, in order that Peggy might have the watchful care of Dr. Bright, which might give her an additional chance in the hand-to-hand struggle with her grim adversary.