age, were preferred to me, and I had begun to consider the advisability of an orderly retreat from the Scottish court before my lustre should be entirely dimmed.  It is said that a man is young so long as he is strong, and I was strong as in the days of my youth.  My cheeks were fresh, my eyes were bright, and my hair was red as when I was twenty, and without a thread of gray.  Stills my temperament was more exacting and serious, and the thought of becoming settled for life, or rather for old age and death, was growing in favor with me.  With that thought came always a suggestion of slim, freckled Dorothy and Sir George’s offer.  She held out to me wealth and position, a peaceful home for my old age, and a grave with a pompous, pious epitaph at Bakewell church, in death.

When I was compelled to leave Scotland, circumstances forced me to a decision, and my resolution was quickly taken.  I would go to Derbyshire and would marry Dorothy.  I did not expect ever again to feel great love for a woman.  The fuse, I thought, had burned out when I loved Mary Stuart.  One woman, I believed, was like another to me, and Dorothy would answer as well as any for my wife.  I could and would be kind to her, and that alone in time would make me fond.  It is true, my affection would be of a fashion more comfortable than exciting; but who, having passed his galloping youth, will contemn the joys that come from making others happy?  I believe there is no person, past the age of forty, at all given to pondering the whys of life, who will gainsay that the joy we give to others is our chief source of happiness.  Why, then, should not a wise man, through purely selfish motives, begin early to cultivate the gentle art of giving joy?

But the fates were to work out the destinies of Dorothy and myself without our assistance.  Self-willed, arrogant creatures are those same fates, but they save us a deal of trouble by assuming our responsibilities.

CHAPTER II

THE IRON, THE SEED, THE CLOUD, AND THE RAIN

The morning following my meeting with Manners, he and I made an early start.  An hour before noon we rode into the town of Rowsley and halted at The Peacock for dinner.

When we entered the courtyard of the inn we saw three ladies warmly wrapped in rich furs leave a ponderous coach and walk to the inn door, which they entered.  One of them was an elderly lady whom I recognized as my cousin, Lady Dorothy Crawford, sister to Sir George Vernon.  The second was a tall, beautiful girl, with an exquisite ivory-like complexion and a wonderful crown of fluffy red hair which encircled her head like a halo of sunlit glory.  I could compare its wondrous lustre to no color save that of molten gold deeply alloyed with copper.  But that comparison tells you nothing.  I can find no simile with which to describe the beauties of its shades and tints.  It was red, but it also was golden, as if the enamoured