[Lady Merton, Colonist by Mrs. Humphry Ward]@TWC D-Link bookLady Merton, Colonist CHAPTER XIV 43/64
A few weeks later, at Mrs. Gaddesden's urgent desire, and while she was in the care of a younger sister to whom she was tenderly attached, there had been a quiet wedding at Genoa, and a very pale and sad Elizabeth had been carried by her Anderson to some of the beloved Italian towns, where for so long she had reaped a yearly harvest of delight.
In Rome, Florence, and Venice she must needs rouse herself, if only to show the keen novice eyes, beside her what to look at, and to grapple with the unexpected remarks which the spectacle evoked from Anderson.
He looked in respectful silence at Bellini and Tintoret; but the industrial growth of the north, the strikes of _braccianti_ on the central plains, and the poverty of Sicily and the south--in these problems he was soon deeply plunged, teaching himself Italian in order to understand them. Then they had returned to Mrs.Gaddesden, and to the surrender of Martindale to its new master.
For the estate went to a cousin, and when the beauty and the burden of it were finally gone, Philip's gentle ineffectual mother departed with relief to the moss-grown dower-house beside Bassenthwaite lake, there to sorrow for her only son, and to find in the expansion of Elizabeth's life, in Elizabeth's letters, and the prospects of Elizabeth's visits, the chief means left of courage and resignation.
Philip's love for Anderson, his actual death in those strong arms, had strengthened immeasurably the latter's claim upon her; and in March she parted with him and Elizabeth, promising them boldly that she would come to them in the fall, and spend a Canadian winter with them. Then Anderson and Elizabeth journeyed West in hot haste to face a general election.
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