This time last year she had all she cared about. I think every woman in the world envied her, at least a little." She smiled. "I know I did. Don't we all dream of having a handsome and charming man love us so passionately he would give up a kingdom and a throne simply to be with us?"
Hester thought back to being eighteen, and the dreams she had had then.
"Yes, I suppose so," she said reluctantly, oddly defensive of the girl she had been. She had felt so wise and invulnerable, and she had been so naive.
"Most of us settle for reality," Dagmar went on. "And find it really quite good in the end. Or we make it good. But it is still natural to dream sometimes. Gisela made her dreams come true... until this spring, that is. Then Friedrich died, which left her desolated. To have had such a ... a unity!" She turned to Hester. "You know they were never apart? He loved her so much he never grew tired of watching her, listening to her, hearing her laugh. He still found her just as fascinating, after twelve years."
"It would be natural to envy that," Hester said honestly. She would not have found it easy to watch such happiness and not wish it for herself. And if she had at one time been in love with the Prince, it would never really stop hurting. She would wonder why she had not been able to awake that love in him, what was lacking in her. What gaiety or charm, what tenderness or quickness to understand, what generosity or honor did she fail to have? Or was it simply that she was physically not pleasing enough, either to look at or in those areas of intimacy of love in which her only experience lay in the imagination and the longing of dreams? Was all that the wound which had festered in Zorah Rostova all these years, and perhaps driven her a little mad?
Dagmar was absentmindedly picking off the occasional dead leaf and fiddling with the bark around the palms.
"What was the Prince like?" Hester asked, trying to picture the romance.
"To look at?" Dagmar asked with a smile.
"No, I meant as a person. What did he like to do? If I were to spend an evening in his company - at dinner, for example - what would I remember most about him?"
"Before he met Gisela, or afterwards?"
"Both! Yes, tell me both."
Dagmar concentrated her memory, forgetting the plants. "Well, before Gisela, you would think first how utterly charming he was." She smiled as she recollected. "He had the most beautiful smile. He would look at you as if he were really interested in all you said. He never seemed to be merely polite. It was almost as if he were half expecting you to turn out to be special, and he did not want to miss any opportunity to find out. I think what you might remember afterwards was the certainty that he liked you."
Hester found herself smiling too. The warmth rippled through her at the idea of meeting someone who gave so much of himself. No wonder Gisela had loved him, and how devastated she must feel now. And on top of the loneliness and the loss which darkened everything had come this nightmare accusation. What on earth had possessed Rathbone to take up Zorah's case? His knighthood had gone to his wits. When the Queen touched him on the shoulder with the sword she must have pricked his brain.
"And after he met Gisela..." Dagmar went on.
Hester jerked her attention back. She had forgotten she had asked that question also.
"Yes?" she said, trying to sound attentive.
"I suppose he was different," Dagmar responded thoughtfully. "He was hurt that people wouldn't accept Gisela, because he loved her so much. But he was never so very close to his family, especially his mother. He was sad going into exile. But I think he believed in his heart that one day they would want him back and then they would see Gisela's worth and accept her." She looked along the passage between the leaves and fronds towards the windows. "I remember the day he left. People were lining the streets. A lot of women were weeping, and they all wished him well, and cried 'God bless you!' and waved kerchiefs and threw flowers."
"And Gisela?" Hester asked curiously. "What did they feel about her?"
"They resented her," Dagmar replied. "In a way, it was as if