The Lady of the Aroostook

Lady of the Aroostook, The,
novel by Howells, published in 1879.

Lydia Blood, a Massachusetts schoolteacher, sails for Venice on the Aroostook. She becomes the object of the attentions of Hicks, a drunken ne'er-do-well, and is saved from his advances by James Staniford, a member of Boston society. Staniford, gradually made aware of Lydia's native nobility that has been veiled by her provincialisms, falls in love with her and they are married in Venice.