too nearly treading on the skirts of immodesty:  yet made she not one worthy conquest, exciting, on the contrary, in all sober minds, that contempt of herself, which she so profusely would be thought to pour down upon the rest of the world.  After she had several years fluttered about the dangerous light, like some silly fly, she at last singed the wings of her reputation; for, being despised by every worthy heart, she became too easy and cheap a prey to a man the most unworthy of all her followers, who had resolution and confidence enough to break through those few cobweb reserves, in which she had encircled her precarious virtue; and which were no longer of force to preserve her honour, when she met with a man more bold and more enterprising than herself, and who was as designing as she was thoughtless.  And what then became of Coquetilla?-Why, she was forced to pass over sea to Ireland, where nobody knew her, and to bury herself in a dull obscurity; to go by another name, and at last, unable to support a life so unsuitable to the natural gaiety of her temper, she pined herself into a consumption, and died, unpitied and unlamented, among strangers, having not one friend but whom she bought with her money.”

“Poor Lady Coquetilla!” said Miss Goodwin; “what a sad thing it is to have a wrong education; and how happy am I, who have so good a lady to supply the place of a dear distant mamma!-But be pleased, Madam, to proceed to the next.”

“Prudiana, my dear, was the daughter of a gentleman who was a widower, and had, while the young lady was an infant, buried her mamma.  He was a good sort of man; but had but one lesson to teach to Prudiana, and that was to avoid all sort of conversation with the men; but never gave her the right turn of mind, nor instilled into it that sense of her religious duties, which would have been her best guard in all temptations.  For, provided she kept out of the sight and conversation of the gentlemen, and avoided the company of those ladies who more freely conversed with the other sex, it was all her papa desired of her.  This gave her a haughty, sullen, and reserved turn; made her stiff, formal, and affected.  She had sense enough to discover early the faults of Coquetilla, and, in dislike to them, fell the more easily into that contrary extreme, which a recluse education, and her papa’s cautions, naturally led her.  So that pride, reserve, affectation, and censoriousness, made up the essentials of her character, and she became more unamiable even than Coquetilla; and as the other was too accessible, Prudiana was quite unapproachable by gentlemen, and unfit for any conversation, but that of her servants, being also deserted by those of her own sex, by whom she might have improved, on account of her censorious disposition.  And what was the consequence?  Why this:  every worthy person of both sexes despising her, and she being used to see nobody but servants, at last throws herself upon one of that class:  in an evil hour, she finds