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 something
that is taking to her low taste in the person of her papa's valet,
a wretch so infinitely beneath her (but a gay coxcomb of a servant),
that every body attributed to her the scandal of making the first
advances; for, otherwise, it was presumed, he durst not have looked
up to his master's daughter.
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