Gray Robert Brown

Isabella, who is kind of the main love interest and main figure of antagonist, turns the heads of both Hugh, the protagonist, and John Gabriel, who's the protagonist slash antagonist, depending on which way you look at it.

But anyway, at that moment, Isabella and Hugh are having one of their many romantic sort of chats outside like they do.

And Westmacott writes, behind her head, Isabella's head, the yew tree outside made a pattern against the sky.

She sat there looking beautific.

And similarly, Isabella, and I think,

I think at this point, so Hugh, who's narrating it, remarks that it's the most that Isabella has ever said, because she's quite sort of dreamlike and quite, I don't know, her speech sort of waxes and wanes and it's quite inconsistent and you're never quite sure where her head is.

But she goes on this diatribe about Rosa, she said,

She said red roses and very dark brown wallflowers and what she calls thick looking pale mauve stocks.

I think it is because, she says, I think it is because they all look as though they would be lovely to touch, rich, like velvet.

And because they have a lovely smell, roses don't look to be by itself in a glass.

Then it's beautiful.

but only for a very short time.

That's the idea again.

Then it droops and dies.

Aspirin and burning the stems and all those things don't do any good.

Not to red roses.

They're all right for the others, but nothing keeps big, dark red roses long.

I wish they didn't die.

And then, yeah, Hugh slash Rasmus says, it was the longest speech Isabella had ever made.

So again, she's invoking, you know, the centrality of the title is there in the most significant moments of the book, I think.