Alas! Rose was but a poor dressmaker, barely eighteen, an age when to the young woman clings a good deal of the romantic folly of the girl. She was the pride of an indulgent mother who never restrained her little whims, and whose scanty means afforded but little relief to the dull monotony of her daily life. Rose, of course, was in her seventh heaven. Her hour of triumph and reward had arrived. Here was the prince who had come to marry the beggar’s daughter; the gallant knight who was to lead her out of the prison house of poverty, to reveal to her all the glories of a world which, after all, looks best at a distance. There is a tide in the affairs of women as well as men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, and Rose believed that the tide was now in her favour. Here was the chance for which she had been dreaming, for which she had been prepared by a due course of silly novel-reading. ‘A tall, dark gentleman is in love with you,’ said the gipsy whom Rose had last consulted on the subject. ‘He will come to you when you least expect it. He is immensely rich, and will make you handsome presents. He will take you to London, where he will marry you, and you shall have horses and carriages, and servants, and music, and wine, and balls, and will live happy ever after.’ The tall, dark gentleman had come, and he had fallen in love with her. It amused him in that dull town to have an affair of this kind on hand. It gave a new zest to his _blasé_ life; the only things he cared for were pretty faces, and he had spent his life ever since leaving Oxford in search of them. Now that he had come to the family estate and title; now that he was Sir Watkin Strahan, of Elm Court, it is not to be presumed that there was any diminution of zeal in his search; on the contrary, he pushed it with more zest than ever. In the language of his friends, he was a devil of a fellow for women, and it was clear to him that this young rustic beauty would soon fall an easy prey. The chances were all in favour of the execution of his wicked design, for he was a cruel man, in spite of his youth and handsome face and figure, a polished gentleman, yet venomous and dangerous as a cobra or a wolf. He was now given up to one pursuit, the ruin of this fair young girl, on whom, in an evil moment, he had cast a longing eye; and poor Rose thought him a model gentleman! He had no scruples of conscience when his fancy was aroused. All he cared for, all he thought of, was himself. Pleasure was to be had, regardless of the cost to himself, of the misery to others. In a rich and old community like ours the number of such men is immense, and the mischief they do no tongue can tell. In our streets by night we see the ruin they have wrought.