sovereign in all history has had a stranger love-story than Elizabeth 'Tudor, the plain, ungainly daughter of Bluff King Hal and Ann Boleyn. Elizabeth ' was "no beauty. 'She had round, hazel eyes, a thin, straight mouth and an awkward limping gait. Yet something in her' make-up twen from such critical judges as Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, tora Burleigh, Hawkins, Walsingham and a score of other famous men something very much more than a Men high and low were as putty in her long, thin hands. Emissaries came from the greatest courts of Europe—Spain, France and Austria—asking her hand in marriage. Elizabeth shrugced and refused every offer; no for~ feigner should share her throne or: rule her heart. They came to late. Such refusals in those troubled times have been taken as insults and caus~ Jed wars. Bue Elizabeth's charm fled so far that the rejected suitors: did nothing worse than pity them-Selves, and wonder why her "Never! was so determined.
"A woman's "never" and a man's always" are very rarely enduring in matters of the heart, Elizabeth tried, lock Hers against the assaults of love, and then gave the key to an adventurer who had already been attainted of treason.
The man was Robert Dudley, a younger son of the Duke of Northum~ ber land. Robert's elder brother married Lady Jane Grey, and the whole family were deeply implicated In the conspiracy to make Lady Jane Queen of England in place of Eliza~ beth's elder sister, Mary Tudor. When. the plot failed, Robert and his kin were sent to the Tower under sentence fof death. His father, his brother and Lady Jane all perished beneath the eadsman's axe; Robert alone was! pardoned. His youth, his dashing good Tooks and silvery tongue won the heart of Bloody Mary, just as, later. they were to turn the shrewd he of his sister.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.