Return, my dear, she has no longer any occasion for you. Alas! whilst you are wasting your time in superfluous affliction, may not your absence be productive of greater evils? Why are you not afraid, who know the beatings of my heart, to abandon your friend to misfortunes which your presence might prevent. O Clara! strange things have happened since your departure. You will tremble to hear the danger to which I have been exposed by my imprudence. Thank heaven, I hope I have now nothing to fear: but unhappily I am as it were at the mercy of another. You alone can restore me to myself: haste therefore to my assistance. So long as your attendance was of service to poor Chaillot, I was silent; I should even have been the first to exhort you to such an act of benevolence. Now that she is no more, her family are become the objects of your charity: of this obligation we could better acquit ourselves, if we were together, and your gratitude might be discharged without neglecting your friend. Since my father took his leave of us we have resumed our former manner of living. My mother leaves me less frequently alone; not that she has any suspicion. Her visits employ more time than would be proper for me to spare from my little studies, and in her absence Bab fills her place but negligently. Now though I do not think my good mother sufficiently watchful, I cannot resolve to tell her so. I would willingly provide for my own safety, without losing her esteem, and you alone are capable of managing this matter. Return then, my dear Clara, prithee return. I regret every lesson at which you are not present, and am fearful of becoming too learned. Our preceptor is not only a man of great merit, but of exemplary virtue, and therefore more dangerous. I am too well satisfied with him to be so with myself. For girls of our age, it is always safer to be two than one, be the man ever so virtuous. Letter VII. Answer.