--I mean
considering others--upon my account, and that nobody offered
to meddle with him till they heard I was likely to be
concerned in him.... Whatever come of this, let not my
enemies misrepresent me. They may abuse the Duke for a time,
and hardly. But, or long, I will, in despite of them, let
the world see that it is not in the power of love, nor any
other folly, to alter my loyalty."

And again on the same day:

"For my own part, I look upon myself as a cleanser. I may
cure people guilty of that plague of Presbytery by
conversing with them, but cannot be infected. And I see very
little of that amongst those persons but may be easily
rubbed off. And for the young lady herself, I shall answer
for her. Had she not been right principled, she would never,
in despite of her mother and relations, made choice of a
persecutor, as they call me."[43]

The young lady seems to have been well-favoured, though it is not easy
to learn much from the female portraits of those days, which are all
very much of a piece. What else she may have been it is impossible to
say. She is a name in her husband's history and nothing more, and in the
few stormy years that were yet to run for him she could not well have
been much more. However, she seems to have been well pleased with her
handsome lover; and, in spite of her mother's opposition, the marriage
was pushed briskly forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June
10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same
place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be
seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame
his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest
brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to
follow, and her cousin John, son of the outlaw of Ochiltree, were also
among the witnesses; and for the bridegroom, his brother-in-arms Lord
Ross[44] and Colin Mackenzie, brother of the Lord Advocate, Sir George
of Rosehaugh. The lady's jointure was fixed at five thousand merks Scots
(something over two hundred and seventy pounds of English money),
secured on certain property in Forfarshire and Perthshire; while she on
her side brought her husband what in those days was reckoned a very
comfortable fortune for a younger child.[45]

The marriage was made under an evil star. Hardly had the blessi