efore I learned of Mary's perfidy.

The events of the night had exhausted Dorothy, and she was confined to her
bed by illness for the first time in her life. She believed that she was
dying, and she did not want to live. I did not go to her apartments. Madge
remained with her, and I, coward-like, feared to face the girl to whom I
had been untrue.

Dorothy's one and only desire, of course, was to see John, but that desire
for a time seemed impossible of accomplishment.

Elizabeth, Cecil, Leicester, and Sir William St. Loe were in secret
consultation many times during three or four days and nights. Occasionally
Sir George was called into their councils, and that flattering attention
so wrought upon the old man's pride that he was a slave to the queen's
slightest wish, and was more tyrannical and dictatorial than ever before
to all the rest of mankind. There were, however, two persons besides the
queen before whom Sir George was gracious: one of these was Mary Stuart,
whose powers of fascination had been brought to bear upon the King of the
Peak most effectively. The other was Leicester, to whom, as my cousin
expressed it, he hoped to dispose of that troublesome and disturbing
body--Dorothy. These influences, together with the fact that his enemies
of Rutland were in the Haddon dungeon, had given Sir George a spleen-vent,
and Dorothy, even in the face of her father's discovery that Manners was
her mysterious lover, had for once a respite from Sir George's just and
mighty wrath.

The purpose of Elizabeth's many councils of war was to devise some means
of obtaining from John and his father, information concerning the plot,
which had resulted in bringing Mary Stuart into England. The ultimate
purpose of Mary's visit, Elizabeth's counsellors firmly believed to be the
dethronement of the English queen and the enthronement of her Scottish
cousin. Elizabeth, in her heart, felt confident that John and his father
were not parties to the treasonable plot, although she had been warned
against each of them. Cecil and Sir William St. Loe also secretly held to
that opinion, though neither of them expressed it, Elizabeth was conscious
of having given to John while at London court an intimation that she would
be willing that Mary should visit England. Of such intimation Cecil and
Sir William had no knowledge, though they, together with many persons of
the Court, believed that Elizabeth was not entirely averse to Mary's
presence.

Lor