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RED AS A ROSE IS SHE.


A Novel.


BY

RHODA BROUGHTON,

AUTHOR OF "COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
"SECOND THOUGHTS," ETC.


_ELEVENTH EDITION._


LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,

Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.

1887.


[Illustration: Frontispiece: ESTHER CRAVEN.
ELISH LA MONTI. PINX.  JOSEPH BROWN. SC.]


RED AS A ROSE IS SHE.




CHAPTER I.


Have you ever been to Wales? I do not ask this question of any one in
particular; I merely address it to the universal British public, or,
rather, to such member or members of the same as shall be wise enough
to sit down and read the ensuing true and moving love story--true as
the loves of wicked Abelard and Heloise, moving as those of good Paul
and Virginia. Probably those wise ones will be very few; numerable
by tens, or even units: they will, I may very safely aver, not form
the bulk of the nation. However high may be my estimate of my own
powers of narration, however amply Providence may have gifted me with
self-appreciation, I may be sure of that, seeing that the only books
I know of which enjoy so wide a circulation are the Prayer-book and
Bradshaw. I am not going to instruct any one in religion or trains,
so I may as well make up my mind to a more limited audience, while I
pipe my simple lay (rather squeakily and out of tune, perhaps), and may
think myself very lucky if that same kind, limited audience do not hiss
me down before I have got through half a dozen staves of the dull old
ditty.

Have you ever been to Wales? If you have ever visited the pretty,
dirty, green spot where Pat and his brogue, where potatoes and
absenteeism and head-centres flourish, _alias_ Ireland, you have
no doubt passed through a part of it, rushing by, most likely, in
the Irish mail; but in that case your eyes and nose and ears were
all so very full of dust and cinders--you were so fully employed in
blinking and coughing and enjoying the poetry of motion--as to be
totally incapable of seeing, hearing, or smelling any of the beauties,
agreeable noises, or good smells, which in happier circumstances might
have offered themselves to your notice. Perhaps you are in the habit,
every midsummer, of taking your half-dozen male and female olive
shoots to have the roses restored to their twelve fat cheeks by blowy
scrambles about the great frowning Orme's Head, or by excavations in
the Rhyl Sands. Perhaps you have gone wedding-touring to Llanberis on
the top of a heavy-laden coach, swinging unsafely round sharp corners,
and nearly flinging your Angelina from your side on to the hard Welsh
road below. Perhaps you have wept with Angelina at the spurious grave
of the martyred Gelert, or eaten pink trout voraciously at Capel Curig,
and found out what a startlingly good appetite Angelina had. But have
you ever lived in the land of the Cymri? Have you ever seen how drunk
the masculine Cymri can be on market days, or what grievous old hags
the feminine Cymri become towards their thirtieth year? Have you ever,
by bitter experience, discovered the truth of that couplet--

    "Taffy was a Welshman,
     Taffy was a thief?"

I _have_ lived in Wales, so I speak with authority; and for my part
I don't think that Taffy is much more given to the breaking of the
eighth commandment than the _canaille_ of any other country. He is not
a bright fellow, is not Taffy; happiest, I think, when rather tipsy,
or when yelling psalms in his conventicle or schism-shop--for Taffy is
addicted to schism; he will tell you plenty of lies, too, and will not
season them with the salt of a racy, devil-me-care wit, as Pat would.
But he is very civil-spoken, and rather harmless; seldomer, I think,
than his cleverer neighbour over the border does he hanker feloniously
after his neighbour's spoons, or hammer his wife's head with the
domestic poker.

But why am I drivelling on, like a sort of Murray and water, on the
manners and character of this, to my thinking, not very interesting
nation? I will waste no more "prave 'ords" upon them, as the few men
and women whom I am going to tell you about, and whom I shall want
you to like a little, or dislike a little, as the case may be, are
not Taffies, only they happen to have stuck up their tent-poles in
Taffy-land when they first make their low bow to you. These men and
women were nothing out of the way for goodness, or beauty, or talent;
they did a hundred thousand naughty things, each one of them. Some
of them did them with impunity, as far as this world goes; some of
them, capricious Megaera and Tisyphone lashed with scorpions for their
derelictions. This is going to be neither a "Life of