_Kingston._
Let me entreat you, my dear sister, to leave Bayam as soon as possible.
I cannot describe the pain with which I heard of Don Alonzo being near
you. You pass hours, days with him; you talk of his eloquent eyes,
his sweet voice. Ah! fly, dearest creature, fly from the danger that
surrounds you. Listen not to that insinuating Spaniard. If you do you
are irrecoverably lost.
Why indeed am I not near you? yet after your flight, to stay in
Cuba was impossible, and my leaving it was, I believe, one of the
principal reasons which determined St. Louis to leave it also: so far
it was fortunate. My heart always acquitted you for having taken the
resolution to abandon your home; for though, as you say, I knew not
all, I knew enough to awaken in my breast every sensation of pity.
Yet it is not sufficient that you are acquitted by a sister, who
will always be thought partial; and if you cannot conciliate general
approbation, at least endeavour to avoid meriting general censure. Who
that hears of your being at Bayam, in the house of the sister of Don
Alonzo, knowing that he had been publicly accused of having taken you
off, and learns, that as soon as the affair was hushed up in St. Jago,
that he went to Bayam, that he passes all his time in your society,
that at home and abroad he is ever at your side, who can hear all this,
and not believe that it was preconcerted? Ah! Clara, Clara, I believe
that it was not, because I love you, and cannot think you would deceive
me. But why stay a month, a week, a day, where you are? Why not come
to me when Anselmo returns? when with me, my friendship, my affection,
will soothe and console you. I will remove from your lacerated breast
the thorns which have been planted there by the hand of misfortune.
You shall forget your sorrows, and I will aid you against your own
heart, for I believe at present _that_ is your most dangerous enemy.