At first she was entranced with the satins, the brocades and the muslins, which were hung upon her, each one seeming more alluring than the last.

Then she began to become rather bored with it all.

There were not only gowns, there were hats and bonnets of many different shapes trimmed with flowers and feathers and made of chipstraw or silk edged with lace. There were shoes to be fitted, there were silk stockings to be bought and petticoats, chemises and shifts to be ordered from a Convent where the nuns embroidered them as if with fairy fingers.

“You are too kind and generous to me,” Gretna cried over and over again.

But Maria only laughed and ordered more.

When, three days after her arrival, Gretna was told that she was to go to Carlton House that evening, she felt as if the curtains were being drawn back on a dramatic and exciting play and she had the role of the heroine.

Everything she had done since she arrived at St. James’s Square appeared to have been in the light of a rehearsal for just this moment.

Maria had taught her to curtsey in the correct Court manner, she had shown her how to wield her fan in what was considered the most enticing and elegant way and she had shown her which knives and forks were used for the long, elaborate dinner parties that apparently the Prince enjoyed every night of his life.

“I tell him he is a gourmet,” Maria said with a little laugh, “but he says that he only wants the best of everything in life and, when one thinks of his miserable childhood, one can understand why.”

“Was he really miserable?” Gretna enquired.

Maria looked over her shoulder as if to be certain that no one was listening.

“The King was so jealous of him,” she related in a low voice, “that the Prince passed his boyhood shut up in a Palace that was almost a prison and he was deprived of all ordinary amusements. His father insisted on treating him as a child when he was a boy and as a boy when he was a man. It was not until he was nineteen, when he legally came of age as Heir to the Throne that the King could no longer keep him under lock and key and was compelled to grant him a small establishment of his own.”

“Why was the King – so unkind?” Gretna was curious to know.

Maria shrugged her shoulders.

“No one knows,” she replied. “But His Majesty is a very strange man. Sometimes people wonder if he is entirely sane, but don’t say I said so. I must not criticise, but sometimes I burn with indignation when I see what His Royal Highness has to suffer.”