
gay ladies of fashion: not but that there was still an evident air of rusticity
and aukwardness in her demeanor, which was interpreted into an agreeable
wildness of spirit, superior to the forms of common breeding. He afterwards
found means to make her acquainted with some distinguished patterns of her own
sex, by whom she was admitted into their most elegant parties, and continued to
make good her pretensions to gentility, with great circumspection, till one
evening, being at cards with a certain lady, whom she detected in the very fact
of unfair conveyance, she taxed her roundly with the fraud, and brought upon
herself such a torrent of sarcastic reproof, as overbore all her maxims of
caution, and burst open the floodgates of her own natural repartee, twanged off
with the appellations of b-- and w--, which she repeated with great vehemence,
in an attitude of manual defiance, to the terror of her antagonist, and the
astonishment of all present: nay, to such an unguarded pitch was she provoked,
that starting up, she snapt her fingers, in testimony of disdain, and, as she
quitted the room, applied her hand to that part which was the last of her that
disappeared, inviting the company to kiss it, by one of its coarsest
denominations.
    Peregrine was a little disconcerted at this oversight in her behaviour,
which, by the dæmon of intelligence, was in a moment conveyed to all the private
companies in town; so that she was absolutely excluded from all polite
communication, and Peregrine, for the present, disgraced among the modest part
of his female acquaintance, many of whom not only forbad him their houses, on
account of the impudent insult he had committed upon their honour as well as
understanding, in palming a common trull upon them, as a young lady of birth and
education, but also aspersed his family, by affirming that she was actually his
own cousin-german, whom he had precipitately raised from the most abject state
of humility and contempt. In revenge for this calumny, our young gentleman
explained the whole mystery of her promotion, together with the motives that
induced him to bring her into the fashionable world; and repeated among his
companions, the extravagant encomiums which had been bestowed upon her by the
most discerning matrons of the age.
    Mean while, the infanta herself being rebuked by her benefactor, for this
instance of misbehaviour, promised faithfully to keep a stricter guard for the
future over her conduct, and applied herself with great assiduity to the
studies, in which she was assisted by the Swiss, who gradually lost the freedom
of his heart
