MADAM,
THE gaiety with which you set out in your first paper, and the agreeable manner in which you acknowledge your fondness for admiration, persuaded several of your readers, that the character under which you appeared was not assumed, but a real one: however, I am much mistaken if the Trifler is not written by the same moral pen that has given us so beautiful a picture of female virtue, in the history of Henrietta.
In full confidence therefore of your being no coquet, I dare solicit you to let loose all your satire against coquetry. Consider it not as folly, but as vice, and do not treat it with railery, but with sharp rebuke.
Oh that I had a pen like yours! and that I could think with equal force, and express those thoughts with equal elegance. That inordinate desire of being admired, which prevails only among the least deserving of our sex, should be displayed in its true colours, and lose the soft name of coquetry under which it is disguised for that of libertinism which is its real characteristic.
Wonder not at my vehemence, madam: my peace and happiness have been sacrificed to that detestable vanity, which seeks its gratification in the misery of others. I have been deprived of the affection of a husband whom I love with the most passionate tenderness; the soft union we formerly lived in is dissolved; discord now rages in a family which was once all harmony and love, and this ruin is the work of a coquet, who, to indulge her passion for admiration, and to add a new adorer to her train, has made me miserable for ever: me who never injured her; me who was once her friend.
But I will take another opportunity to give you my unhappy story. In the mean time I intreat you to print this letter, and you will really oblige,
Madam,
Your constant Reader, PERDITA.