And the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, whose action in kissing the butcher to gain a vote for Mr. Charles James Fox, was still talked about and depicted in cartoons, asked her,

“When are we going to come to your Wedding, little one? I have already a very charming present in mind for you.”

Gretna managed to blush and say nothing, but she could not ignore the fact that Sir Harry was desperately in love with her and was making no pretence of hiding his affection.

She liked him, she liked him so much that she even played a little with the idea of accepting the offer of marriage that she knew he would make to her at the first convenient moment.

Then she thought of the love that her father and mother had borne each other and knew that any affection she could feel for Sir Harry would be but a very pale pretence of the passion that had made her parents inseparable even in death.

“Harry, it’s so enjoyable being able to converse with you,” she said to him one evening when they were dancing together at a masked ball given by Mrs. Sheridan, “that I realise how much I have missed in never having had a brother.”

“Dammit!” Harry Carrington expostulated. “I don’t want to be a brother to you, Gretna,”

“That is how I think of you,” she said firmly.

“I love you, you know that well enough,” he replied ardently,

She shook her head at him, well aware that she was looking her best with her hair powdered and embellished with two pink roses. She wore a gown of blush-pink satin covered with pink gauze, a luxurious material that had crossed the Channel only a week previously.

“You are becoming a minx,” Sir Harry warned her. “If you are not careful, the hostesses will be talking of you as a flirt and then you will be finished, my girl.”

“Why should that shock them?” Gretna asked in surprise. “There are a great many people in this room who flirt, I have seen them at it.”

“But you must be particularly careful not to acquire a bad reputation,” Sir Harry said and then pressed his lips together as if he felt that he had said too much.

There was no need for him to say anything more. Gretna was well aware of the insinuation behind his words.

She, above all other girls of her age, must be circumspect because of the situation she found herself in and because she was living in the same house as Maria Fitzherbert.

It was all too obvious.

The little innuendoes, the half-spoken remarks of people, even the look in an eye that told her that, while Society accepted Mrs. Fitzherbert because the Prince of Wales insisted on it, they were still only too ready to condemn the relationships between the Heir to the Throne and the attractive Roman Catholic widow.