His associates were chosen from the ranks of gamesters, ruffians, and tavern maids.

Still, he was a scion of one of the greatest families of England's nobility.
After Sir George's trouble with Dorothy, growing out of his desire that I should wed her, the King of the Peak had begun to feel that in his beautiful daughter he had upon his hands a commodity that might at any time cause him trouble.

He therefore determined to marry her to some eligible gentleman as quickly as possible, and to place the heavy responsibility of managing her in the hands of a husband.

The stubborn violence of Sir George's nature, the rough side of which had never before been shown to Dorothy, in her became adroit wilfulness of a quality that no masculine mind may compass.

But her life had been so entirely undisturbed by opposing influences that her father, firm in the belief that no one in his household would dare to thwart his will, had remained in dangerous ignorance of the latent trouble which pervaded his daughter from the soles of her shapely feet to the top of her glory-crowned head.
Sir George, in casting about for a son-in-law, had hit upon the heir to the house of Derby as a suitable match for his child, and had entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with the earl against the common enemy, Dorothy.