“Juanna,” he said to her on the day of their arrival at Blantyre, “you remember some words that passed between your father and myself when he lay upon his death-bed, to the effect that, should we both wish it, he trusted to my honour to remarry you formally as soon as an opportunity might arise.
“Now the opportunity is here, and I ask you if you desire to take me for your husband, as, above everything in the world, I desire to make you my beloved wife.”
She coloured to her beautiful eyes and answered in a voice that was almost a whisper:
“If you wish it and think me worthy of you, Leonard, you know that I wish it also. I have always loved you, dear, yes, even when I was behaving worst to you; but there is—Jane Beach!”
“I have told you before, Juanna,” he answered with some little irritation, “and now I tell you again, that Jane Beach and I have done with each other.”
“I am sure that I am very glad to hear it,” Juanna replied, still somewhat dubiously. The rest of that conversation, being of a private character, will scarcely interest the public.
When he spoke thus, Leonard little knew after what fashion Jane Beach and he had wound up their old love affair.
Two days later Leonard Outram took Juanna Rodd to wife, “to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death did them part,” and their rescuer, Sydney Wallace, who by now had become their fast friend, gave her away.
Very curious were the memories that passed through Juanna’s mind as she stood by her husband’s side in the little grass-roofed chapel of Blantyre, for was this not the third time that she had been married, and now only of her own free will? She bethought her of that wild scene in the slave camp; of Francisco who died to save her, and of the blessing which he had called down upon her and this very man; of that other scene in the rock prison, when, to protect Leonard’s life, she was wed, according to the custom of the Children of the Mist, to that true-hearted gentleman and savage, Olfan, their king. Then she awoke with a happy sigh to know that the lover at her side could never be taken from her again until death claimed one of them.
“We shall be dreadfully poor, Leonard,” she said to him afterwards; “it would have been much better for you, dear, if I had fallen into the gulf instead of the rubies.”