Page 72 of The Gentlewoman Author

They sat on a bench in silence. The sun lit his shoulders with hope.

“There must be a way to convince your father,” he said.

“Well, he is a toadeater. If Lady Halverson approached him, he might accept my employment with her.”

“Of whom do you speak?” Mrs. Eliot appeared before them.

“Oh! I was saying that if Lady Halverson begged my father to allow me to serve as her companion, he might, in his obsequiousness, agree.”

“She would not travel to Cornwall, regardless of how she likes you. But I would be happy to deliver the message to your father.” A flash in Mrs. Eliot’s eye told Daniel the woman before him could hold her own against any stubborn father. “I can bring a letter from her ladyship, with all the superiority of her rank, and convince him that his refusal would be a slight to the peerage.”

Louisa nodded and sprang to her feet. She took Mrs. Eliot by the elbows, bouncing on her toes. “Would you? It would work! I know it would. He would melt before you.” The girl’s enthusiasm bloomed, and her face regained its color.

“Do you trust this plan well enough to end our engagement?” he asked.

“I am willing to risk almost anything,” Louisa said. “Oh, not that you are so unacceptable a companion, but we must consider Aunt Mary.”

Mrs. Eliot sent a sly smile to Daniel. It would work. It must work.

“I will go to Mary, then,” he said. “And I will inform my parents.”

Daniel made his way to the sickroom, where he found his mother reading poetry to his father, reclining on the bed, a mound of cushions behind his back.

“Miss Thorpe and I called off our engagement. You may keep your castle and leave it to Emma. I choose Lady Mary.”

Although the female may be thought by some, though very unjustly, to be inferior in intellect to the other sex, yet, in the most sublime part of humanity, no one can dispute their equality; they have souls of as divine an origin, as endless a duration, and as capable of infinite happiness.

The Whole Duty of a Woman, An Infallible Guide to the Fairer Sex, 1737