She was a strange mixture of ignorance and uncultivated poetry.

She could speak well; her voice was sweet, her accent, caught from him, good; alone he never noticed any deficiencies, but if he met an English friend in Florence and brought him home to dine, then Ronald began to wish that Dora would leave off blushing and grow less shy, that she could talk a little more, and that he might lose all fear of her making some terrible blunder.
The third year of their married life dawned; Dora was just twenty, and Ronald twenty-three.

There had been no rejoicing when he had attained his majority; it passed over unnoticed and unmarked.

News came to them from England, letters from the little farm in Kent, telling of simple home intelligence, and letters from Lady Earle, always sad and stained with tears.

She had no good news to tell them.