“Mr. Vivian, I trust that I am not deficient in maidenly modesty,” said Lady Julia, “when it is not incompatible with what I deem a higher virtue--sincerity. Now and ever, frankness is, and shall be, my only policy. The confidence I am about to repose in you, sir, is the strongest proof of my esteem, and of the gratitude I feel for your attachment.--My heart is no longer in my power to bestow. It is--young as I am, I dare to pronounce the words--irrevocably fixed upon one who will do honour to my choice. Your proposal was made to my father--Why was it not made to me?--Men--all men but one--treat women as puppets, and then wonder that they are not rational creatures!--Forgive me this too just reproach. But, as I was going to say, your proposal has thrown me into great difficulties--the greater because my father warmly approves of it. I have a strong affection for him; and, perhaps, a year or two ago, I should, in the ignorance in which I was dogmatically brought up, have thought it my duty to submit implicitly to parental authority, and to receive a husband from the hands of a father, without consulting either my own heart or my own judgment. But, since my mind has been more enlightened, and has opened to higher views of the dignity of my sex, and higher hopes of happiness, my ideas of duty have altered; and, I trust, I have sufficient courage to support my own idea of the rights of my sex, and my firm conviction of what is just and becoming.” Vivian was again going to say something; but, whether against or in favour of the rights of the sex, he had not clearly decided; when her ladyship saved him the trouble, by proceeding with the train of her ideas. “My sincerity towards my father will, perhaps, cost me dear; but I cannot repent of it. As soon as I knew the state of my own heart--which was not till very lately--which was not, indeed, till you gave me reason to think you seriously liked me--I openly told my father all I knew of my own heart. Would you believe it?--I am sure I should not, unless I had seen and felt it--my father, who, you know, professes the most liberal opinions possible; my father, who, in conversation is ‘All for love, and the world well lost;’ my father, who let Miss Bateman put the Heloise into my hands, was astonished, shocked, indignant, at his own daughter’s confession, I should say, assertion of her preference of a man of high merit, who wants only the advantages, if they be advantages, of rank and fortune.