Owing to Doll's rusty red hair, slim shanks, and freckled face, the proposition had not struck me with favor, yet to please Sir George I had feigned acquiescence, and had said that when the time should come, we would talk it over. Before my flight from Scotland I had often thought of Sir George's proposition made six or seven years before. My love for Mary Stuart had dimmed the light of other beauties in my eyes, and I had never married. For many months before my flight, however, I had not been permitted to bask in the light of Mary's smiles to the extent of my wishes. Younger men, among them Darnley, who was but eighteen years of 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. Still, 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.