“Would it not be best to go away – and forget him?” Gretna asked almost in a whisper.
It was the pain on her friend’s face that gave her the courage to speak the words.
Maria looked at her for a moment incredulously and then she said,
“Oh, no! You don’t understand, I love him and he loves me. That is all that matters. Any suffering is worthwhile because of that, any discomfort and any insults. It is all of little consequence beside the greatness of our love.”
There was almost the sound of rapture in her tones and Gretna felt that there was nothing more she could say. Yet she could not help a prayer in her heart that Maria would never be disappointed or hurt by the man she loved.
The Prince was so young, so gay and so surrounded by alien influences. She had thought privately that there
