Caroline thought this would be using the man ill.
Lady Jane maintained that it would be using him much worse to refuse him before he asked.
“But without refusing,” Caroline said that “a gentleman might be led to perceive when he was not likely to be accepted, and thus would be saved the pain and humiliation of a rejected proposal.”
“It was not a young lady’s first business to think of that—her first duty was to do what was right and proper for herself,” Lady Jane said.
“Certainly; but the very question is, what is right and proper?”
“To give a distinct answer when a distinct question is asked, neither more nor less,” said Lady Jane. “Caroline, on these subjects you must trust to one who knows the world, to tell you the opinion of the world. A woman is safe, and cannot be blamed by friend or foe, if she adhere to the plain rule, ‘Stay till you are asked.’ Till a gentleman thinks proper, in form, to declare his attachment, nothing can be more indelicate than for a lady to see it.”
“Or, in some cases, more disingenuous, more cruel, than to pretend to be blind to it.”
“Cruel!—Cruel is a word of the last century, or the century before the last. Cruelty is never heard of now, my dear—gentlemen’s hearts don’t break in these our days; or suppose an odd heart should break, if the lady is treating it according to rule, she is not to blame. Why did not the proud tongue speak? Whatever happens, she is acquitted by the world.”
“And by her own conscience? Surely not, if she deceive, and injure by deception.”
Lady Jane warmly repeated that she knew the world—that at her time of life she ought to know the world—and that she was certain any line of conduct but that which she had pointed out would expose a woman to the charge of indelicacy, and perhaps of impertinence.