I have received the message, sent me by Anselmo, my dear Clara, and my joy at hearing of your welfare, made me forget for a moment, the many causes you have given me of complaint. Yet what more have I learned than that you exist? of all that concerns you I remain ignorant. Unkind Clara! thus you repay my friendship! thus console me for all the solicitude I have felt for you! To have staid with St. Louis, after you left him, was not possible, for he did not conceal his suspicions of my having been in your secret, nor could I find in Cuba an eligible retreat; for all my friends were his, and all disposed to condemn you. I accepted therefore, with pleasure, the offer made by Madame L----, to take me with her to Jamaica. Write to me, my dear sister, immediately. Tell me every thing. Does not your heart require the affectionate sympathy it has been accustomed to receive from mine? Can you live without me?--without me who have followed you, and love you with an affection so tender? Dearest Clara, speak, and I will fly to you! Means shall be found to return to Philadelphia, where, in peaceful obscurity we may live, free from the cares which have tormented you, and filled myself with anxiety. Anselmo will be careful of your letter. Write fully, and remember that you are writing to more than a sister; to a friend, who loves you, who adores your virtues, and who pardons, while she weeps, your faults! LETTER XXVIII. TO MARY ----. _Bayam, 20 leagues from St. Jago._ I know your heart, my dear Mary! On the affection which glows for me in that heart, I have counted for the pardon of my errors, and your letter convinces me that I have not been deceived. You know, for you witnessed, my domestic infelicity; yet, how many of my pains did I not conceal, to spare you the anguish of lamenting sorrows which you could not alleviate! St. Louis, after his arrival at St. Jago, had connected himself with a company of gamesters, and with them passed all his time.--Often returning at a late hour from the gaming table, he has treated me with the most brutal violence,--this you never knew; nor many things which passed in the loneliness of my chamber, where, wholly in his power, I could only oppose to his brutality my tears and my sighs. To his intolerable and groundless jealousy at Cape Francois you were no stranger: it embittered my days. Since our arrival in this island it increased. In every man that approached me he saw a rival! and the more amiable the object, the more terrible were his apprehensions. He became acquainted, at some of the haunts of gaming, with Don Alonzo de P---- and brought him to our house, but, when his visits had been repeated two or three times, all the tortures of jealousy were awakened in the breast of St. Louis. If I received this young stranger with pleasure, it was because I found him interesting. If I avoided him it was an acknowledgement of his power!