'Indeed,' returned I, 'it would be an act of real charity to decide for me. I am so terribly bewildered. I would not for the world act basely to Lord Frederick; and I rather think that before he began to teaze me about marrying him, I liked him better than any body--that is than any man--almost. But then when I think of my father--and I love him so dearly, and he has no other child--no one to love him but only me! Indeed I cannot bear to thwart him.' 'My dear Ellen,' said Lady St Edmunds, 'I believe your father to be a very worthy old gentleman, and I have a great respect for him; but, indeed, his cause could not be committed to worse hands than mine; for I can see no earthly business that he has to interfere in the matter. It is not he who is to be married. For my own part, I married in very spite of my father; and if I live till my children are marriageable, I shall assuredly be reasonable enough to let them be happy in their own way.' For a while, I defended the parental right, or rather the natural sentiment which still remained to restrain my folly;--but the proper foundation of filial duty, of all duty, was wanting in my mind, and therefore the superstructure was unstable as the vapour curling before the breeze. Even my good propensities had not the healthy nature of real virtue. They were at best but the fevered flush adorning my sickly state in the eyes of others, and fatally disguising it from my own. By frequent argument, by occasional reflections, and by dexterous confounding of truth and falsehood, Lady St Edmunds so far darkened my moral perceptions, that Lord Frederick's claim seemed to outweigh that of my father. Nor was the task hard; for honour and humanity are sounds more soothing to human pride than the harsh name of submission. Lord Frederick himself meanwhile watched vigilantly over his own interests, and was abundantly importunate and encroaching. Miss Arnold, indeed, continued to affect prudent counsels; but while she offered me such feeble dissuasives as rather served to excite than to deter, she procured or invented intelligence, which, with every expression of indignation, she communicated to me, that Lady Maria had so far misrepresented my indiscretion at the masquerade, as to make my marriage with Lord Frederick a matter of prudence at least, if not of necessity. Thus goaded on every side, without steadiness to estimate the real extent of my difficulties, or resolution to break through them, having no special dislike to Lord Frederick, nor any conscious preference for another, I sanctioned in weakness the claims which I had conferred in folly. I gave my lover permission to believe that I would soon reward his constancy; if it can be called reward to obtain a wife, whose violation of her early ties gives the strongest pledge that she will disregard those which are new.