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Updated: June 10, 2025
"No . . . yes . . . well, now that I think of it, there was a big scare a year or so ago about a young peeress who disappeared mysteriously." "Was . . . was it Lady Raa?" It is of no use saying what I felt after that, except that flying in an express train to London, I was as impatient of space and time as if I had been in a ship down south stuck fast in the rigid besetment of the ice.
But at last, with a great effort to control myself, I took his hand and kissed it, and then turned my face to the wall. That was the beginning of the end, and when, next day towards noon, my husband came with drowsy eyes to make a kind of ungracious apology, saying he supposed the doctor had been sent for, I said: "James, I want you to take me home." "Home? You mean . . . Castle Raa?" "Y-es."
Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you that I think it a sin to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it is must know that I am doing no wrong. And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa.
There are numerous islands in the group, over all of which Raa Kook is king, although the cluster of islands to the south is restive and occasionally in revolt. These natives with whom I live are Polynesian, I know, because their hair is straight and black. Their skin is a sun-warm golden-brown.
With scarce a pang, when the Sparwehrs' water-casks were filled, I left Raa Kook and his pleasant land, left Lei-Lei and all her flower-garlanded sisters, and with laughter on my lips and familiar ship-smells sweet in my nostrils, sailed away, sea-cuny once more, under Captain Johannes Maartens. A marvellous wandering, that which followed on the old Sparwehr.
Weeks passed; the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave place to a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly clouds; the land became soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed their bare black boughs; the withered leaves drifted along the roads before blustering winds that came up from the sea; the evenings grew long and the mornings dreary; but still Alma, with her mother, remained at Castle Raa.
But hardly had she left the room, when my heart was in my mouth again, and I was trembling with fear lest she should take me at my word and then the last of my friends would be gone. Within the next few days the house-party arrived. There would be twenty of them at least, not counting valets and ladies' maids, so that large as Castle Raa was the house was full.
I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to the stern, making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of my home faded away in the sunlight, which was now tipping the hilltops with a feathery crest, when my cabin was darkened by somebody who stood in the doorway. It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he was. He was the young Lord Raa.
Finally of the young Lord Raa that the devil's dues must be in the man, for after being "sent down" from Oxford he had wasted his substance in riotous living in London and his guardian had been heard to say he must marry a rich wife soon or his estates would go to the hammer. Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period of six years.
If I haven't got a son I've got a son-in-law, and when I get a grandson he'll be the richest man that ever stepped into Castle Raa, and the uncrowned king of Ellan." At that there was a tempest of cheers, which, mingling with the clamour of the storm, made a deafening tumult. "They're saying a dale nowadays about fathers and children daughters being separate beings, and all to that.
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