His charming mistress cast down her eyes abashed, “I fear, without cause perhaps,” she said, “yet, you have yourself often remarked, that true tenderness trembles at every delay of what it sighs for.—These six months passed with a relation of the man who calls himself my husband—these six months in which you may be wrought on to abandon me—are so frightful—so sad—alas! how shall I live through them!”
Antonio, who was reading the important letter, now broke in upon Sebastian’s soothings: he spoke with peculiar warmth on the weakness of allowing himself to be thus trifled with by an inferior. He could not understand, he observed, any of those romantic notions which his royal master urged in defence of Don Emanuel; but frankly gave it as his opinion that De Castro, so far from being sincere in his promise of resigning the lady in half a year, was more likely to take a base advantage of a husband’s authority, and whenever Donna Gonsalva should be removed from her own family, render it impossible for her to return to her lover.
“I am not a deep reasoner, my honoured cousin,” added the prior, with his usual good-humoured levity—“but depend on it I see actions as they are; and never am out in men’s motives,—shall I tell you what I would do in your majesty’s place?—I would flatly refuse this insidious offer, and send the proposer of it back to the Indies: give him the viceroyalty by way of consolation.”
“Not to get him quietly out of the way:” replied the King, “do not injure yourself so in my thoughts Antonio, by urging such unworthy conduct!—no, he shall be heard at the tribunal to which I appeal. I am not going to rob him.”
“Your majesty’s apprehension is so quick, and so erring sometimes!” cried the smiling prior, “I simply meant him to be complimented with the government of India, after the cause had gone against him.”
“No, nor that either,” answered Sebastian, “I will not purchase the silence of an enemy at the expense of my people. If I am to believe De Castro insincere and unworthy, he is not to be trusted with the destinies of thousands.”
“Well, you must pardon my zeal, sire!—I would perform a ten year’s penance for your sake, (and your majesty knows how ill long fasts and sleepless nights suit my taste,) and it chafes me into uncharitableness, perhaps, to find a fellow cheating your generous nature with mere breath.”
“I know your affectionate heart!” said the King, with one of his benign smiles: then turning to Gonsalva, who had been all this time resting her fair cheek on his shoulder, and moistening it with tears, he besought her to pronounce her will, and it should be obeyed.
“Renew your solicitations at Rome!” she exclaimed, pleasure sparkling in her eyes—“suffer me still to remain at Xabregas with my kind aunt here—and from this hour till the blessed one which makes me yours, refuse to see or hear from Don Emanuel.—Never, never again let me be tortured with his presence.”
The King kissed her hand in token of assent; and De Castro’s proposal was rejected.