“I love you and you will never leave me again!” he replied. “I could not bear it.”

Then he was kissing her wildly, passionately, demandingly, and a fire leapt within them both until Thalia seemed to break under the strain of it and she hid her face against his shoulder.

“How soon will you marry me?” he asked and his voice was deep and unsteady.

“As soon as – you – want me to – ”

“That is now. This moment!”

She gave a little cry of sheer happiness.

“I was so – certain that you had no wish to – marry anybody.”

“I only want to marry you. There has never been another woman who made me feel as you do or made me realise that I could never be happy without her.”

“And – suppose you find – once we are married that you are – bored with me, as you have – been with so many – other women?”

The Earl’s arms tightened around her.

“I became bored with other women because they were not you,” he said. “This is different, my precious love, and it will take me a very long time to tell you how different.”

He looked down at her and then held her from him at arms’ length.

“I have never seen you fashionably gowned before.”

“Do you – like me like – this?”

“I love you whatever you wear,” he replied, “but I am disappointed.”

“D-disappointed?” Thalia asked anxiously.

“I wanted to give you the right background for your beauty and I used to imagine how different you would look without that little grey gown. But now your father has had the fun that I had promised myself.”

“It has not – spoilt things for – you?”

The Earl smiled.

“Nothing would do that. It’s just that I wanted you to belong to me so completely and absolutely and to know that there was nobody in your life except me.”

“There is – no one in my life – except you.”

She saw the delight her words brought to his eyes.

Then, as if she felt that she must reassure him, she moved closer to him.

“It is – hard to believe you are – here,” she said. “I have missed you so desperately – I have been so terribly – unhappy without you – and I thought that I should be – alone for the rest of my life.”

She knew that he understood what she meant by the word ‘alone’ and he said with his lips touching the softness of her cheek,

“That is what I felt. It was as if you took part of me away with you and I knew that I would never be complete again until I had found you.”

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half a groan.

“I never knew that love could be so painful, such excruciating misery.”

“And – now?”

“Now it is a wonder beyond words, a happiness that I believe, my darling, will grow every day and every year that we are together.”