Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of English parents and guardians. From Vilette. Part 4.

Vilette :
 ""My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and daring-- perhaps desperate--line of action. I had nothing to lose. Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past, forbade return. If I failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would suffer?""
Read  Vilette: villette/e-text/section2