Stimulated to convince Don Emanuel that his choice arose not from a temporary gust of passion, Sebastian half-resolved to accept these offered terms, and consent to six months probation. With this view he hastened from the palace of Ribera to that of Xabregas, to communicate the letter to Donna Gonsalva: he found her in the midst of her little court, like the Queen of beauty surrounded by graces and loves. On his entrance the nobles retired, leaving only the prior of Crato, and Donna Sancha Vimiosa. While the fair Portuguese read De Castro’s letter, the blood suddenly forsook her lips and cheeks; she fixed her amazed eyes on Don Antonio, as if unconscious of what they looked on, repeating aloud “for six months!”--at that moment Sebastian forgot his rational resolution; “but we are not to be debarred the society of each other all that time, my Gonsalva!” said he, tenderly kissing her hand. Gonsalva gazed at him with a mixture of astonishment and apprehension--“already so indifferent!” she exclaimed--“artful De Castro, thou knowest but too well, I fear, how those six months would end!” “Donna Gonsalva!” cried the prior, with no very respectful roughness, “are you in your senses?--observe the king.” Instantaneously recalled, the beautiful Gonsalva recovered from her extraordinary agitation, and turning to her lover, beheld on his countenance such an expression of grateful surprize and fond regret, then she half sunk into his arms, repeating with the voice of a syren “you will not banish me from happiness for six long months? you will not kill your Gonsalva with fears which your authority may end for ever!” Sebastian pressed her to him in a transport of love--“what is it you fear!” he exclaimed, “what is it alarms my Gonsalva!” 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.