LETTER XXX.
To Clara.
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.