Виктория Холт - The Mask of the Enchantress

"What is that?"

"We'll marry before we go, but that will have to be secret. We'll go to Australia after our marriage. Perhaps we'll visit Vulcan Island. Or would that make you too sad? We want no more sadness. Then we'll come home ... home to our castle. There's only one thing I have to find out."

"What's that?"

"Whether you agree."

I smiled up at him and I said: "I am not dreaming, am I?"

"No. You are very wide awake."

Then he held me fast and I just wanted that moment to go on forever. Mrs. Christopher's drawing room with its pictures of pugs and pekes who had ruled her in the past was to me the most beautiful place in the world.

So we went and told her and she beamed on us and said it was like one of the romances I read aloud to her and she was so happy for us. She didn't mind in the least having to put another advertisement in the Lady's Companion for someone to walk the dog and change the library books.

Within a month we were married. We left England on the Ocean Queen and most blissfully did I cross the seas to the other side of the world. We were so happy ... more so because we had lost each other for a while.

We stayed in Sydney among the graziers and the successful miners; we went out to Vulcan Island. It was deeply moving to see the crescent-shaped canoes coming out to the ship. I stood there on the sandy beach and looked up at the Giant who had destroyed so much. He was quiet now. He had finished his grumbling. Already there were a few huts dotted about and the palm trees which had escaped the holocaust were fresh and green and laden with fruit. More would be planted. Perhaps Vulcan would be inhabited again.

In due course we came back to England, and there was the castle the same as it had been for hundreds of years. The servants came out to greet the master and the new Mateland bride whom he had discovered in Australia and who had turned out to be his kinswoman, a Mateland herself.

Janet was there.

As soon as I was in my room she came to me. For the second time she gave way to emotion. That was when I pinned onto her blouse the cameo brooch which I had kept for her.

Then she looked at me.

"So all's well," she said. "You've come through, eh? After all your sins... ."

"Yes, Janet," I said. "After all my sins, I've come through."