What a picture have you sent me of coquetry; it will cure me of all pretensions to it! I shall never again boast of being a coquette, and I shall all my life repent ever having had the appearance of one! You have really made a deep impression on me, but why did you not tell me all this when I was but twenty years old? My reformation would then have done you more honour, and would have spared me much pain. But you tell me I was only half a coquette. I used to think so myself; but are you sure of it? You have really troubled my conscience! Pray never talk to me of coquetry again. Oh, the wicked thing! If you knew the situation I was in when I received your letter! That I was on the edge of a precipice, which perhaps you have drawn me from! I perceive your astonishment, but I can conceal nothing from you. You will see what confidence I repose in you, but you are so indulgent, so superior to the weaknesses of our sex; you know how to excuse them all! Attend then, and by the confession I am going to make, judge of the services you have done me! You know my principles, and you are very sure, that whatever follies I may have to reproach myself with, at least my heart remains pure. I have been indiscreet enough to give the world room to say I had a lover. But it was not believed; and for some years my conduct has been thought irreproachable; for the world, a hasty judge, though an impartial one, retracts with as good a grace as it condemns. Well, my dear friend, let us come to the fact. I thought when I was one-and-thirty, I had nothing more to fear from envy, from coquetry, or from men! Is it not well, said I, that I have preserved my reputation; I have passed the age in which one is subject to such dangerous trials, and it is a happy thing to find one is no longer young enough to be in danger from them.