“You have belonged to it three years already, Jenny dear, ever since the day when I found you on Burning Rock.”
“I love them all, and they love me, Fritz! Well, in a few months more we shall be with them all again; we shall be back——”
“Married, Jenny?”
“Yes, Fritz, if you wish it, since you have your father’s consent and my aunt will not refuse me hers.”
“Jenny, dear Jenny!” Fritz exclaimed, falling on his knees beside her. “Our plans will not be changed at all, and I shall take back my wife to my father and mother.”
Jenny Montrose remained henceforth in her aunt’s house, where Fritz and Frank came every day to see her. Meanwhile all the necessary arrangements were made for the celebration of the marriage within the briefest time that the law permitted.
But there was other business of some importance to be attended to, business which had been the purpose of the two brothers in coming to Europe.
There was the sale of the various articles of value collected on the island, the coral gathered on Whale Island, the pearls taken from the bay, the nutmegs and the vanilla. M. Zermatt had not been mistaken about their market value. They produced the considerable sum of eight thousand pounds sterling.
When one remembered that the banks of Pearl Bay had been no more than skimmed, that coral was to be found on many parts of the coast, that nutmegs and vanilla could be produced in large quantities, and that there were many other treasures in New Switzerland, one had to acknowledge that the colony was destined for a height of prosperity which set it in the foremost of the over-sea dominions of Great Britain.
In accordance with M. Zermatt’s instructions part of the sum realised from the sale of these articles was to be spent upon things required to complete the stock at Rock Castle and the farms in the Promised Land. The rest, about three-quarters of the whole sum, and the ten thousand pounds coming from Colonel Montrose’s estate, were deposited in the Bank of England, upon which M. Zermatt would be able to draw in the future as he might require, thanks to the communication which would soon be established with the capital.