The chapter opens with a flashback to the previous chapter, in which we learn that Count Evremonde has sent a letter to Elmire, asking her to come to his school with him. Elmire refuses, saying that she will not let him know that she is in his room. She tells him that he can decide what he should do with her, but that he should be a good person and not worry about what other people think of him. The narrator then tells us that Elmire's school is the same school as hers, and that she always wished she could go there. She says that if she could shake Elmire with thoughts of her, he'd be more inclined to expose his rival. The chapter ends with a soliloquy by the narrator in which he says that he would not tell Elmire to stop writing her novel if she had to choose.