What's a woman for, after she looks like that? If she
were not hanging about my neck I could marry some fine strapping girl
who would give me an heir before a year was out."
If young Roxholm did not hear this special anecdote, he heard others
from various sources which were productive in him of many puzzled and
somewhat anxious thoughts. "Why was it," he pondered, "that women who
had not the happy fortune of his mother seemed at so cruel a
disadvantage--that men who were big and handsome having won them, grew
tired of them and cast them aside, with no care for their loneliness
and pain? Why had God so made them that they seemed as helpless as poor
driven sheep? 'Twas not fair it should be so--he could not feel it
honest, though he was beset by grave fears at his own contumacy since
he had been taught that God ordained all things. Had he ordained this,
that men should be tyrants, and base, and cruel, and that women should
be feeble victims who had but the power to moan and die and be
forgotten? There was my Lord Peterborough, who had fought against
Algerine pirates, and at nineteen crowned his young brow with glory in
action at Tripoli. To the boyish mind he was a figure so brilliant and
gallant and to be adored that it seemed impossible to allow that his
shining could be tarnished by a fault, yet 'twas but a year after his
marriage with the fair daughter of Fraser of Mearns that he had wearied
of his love and gaily sailed for the Algerine coast again.
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