If, as Mary Fahnestock-Thomas reported in her _Georgette Heyer, A Critical Retrospective_, what Heyer thought of women in general could be culled from her writing, then shame on Heyer! This book's description of women: their coquetry, their dependency on men for happiness, simply gags. If her later writing (from the 40-60s) didn't shine with both femininity and feminism I could never have read her. Clearly, Heyer matured along the road of life, and her writing evidences that. Don't bother to read this book unless there isn't so much as a cereal box to read in the house. Title alludes to Isaiah 55:13: "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off."