Was he to expect succour from his grand uncle, Don Henry? That uncle now knew the gratifications of absolute power, and might not perhaps feel willing to resign them: was he to hope for freedom from the voluntary sacrifices of his people!--those people were the descendants of that pitiless generation who a century before had basely suffered the infant Don Ferdinand to die in captivity. Ferdinand had offered himself to the Moors as a pledge for the fulfilment of a certain treaty, the Portuguese refused to ratify it, and left him to languish out his youth in confinement. Such a precedent might but too fatally influence the present conduct of Portugal. At this piercing thought, the unhappy monarch lost all self-command, and no longer restrained the expression of his fears. Sometimes Kara Aziek would behold him given up to the bitterest grief, imagining his beloved Gonsalva torn from him by death; at others, she would witness the whirlwinds of his character, while he conceived himself abandoned by his subjects, or his relations: resentment and sorrow then swayed him by turns; and it was only at the sound of her pitying voice, or at the gaze of her imploring eyes, that he would rein in his anger, or check the tide of lamentation. So tossed by various passions, so agitated with many a fond fear, so surrounded and touched by the ill-disguised tenderness of Kara Aziek, there were moments in which Sebastian felt her excellence so exquisitely, that he doubted whether he could be quite happy even in Portugal with Gonsalva, unless she were there to complete it: his imprudently-ingenuous nature spoke the sentiment as it arose, fatally flattering the young and inexperienced Aziek with ideas she was scarcely conscious of indulging. The different emotions of each, soon produced a visible effect: Sebastian lost his strength and his looks; Kara Aziek suddenly became languid, sick, and sad: when with the King, her eyes no longer dwelt on him with an apparent forgetfulness of every thing but of that soul whose movements she was tracing through the eloquent countenance; they were tearful and downcast, and that irresistible meltingness which used to make love visible in their floating orbs, was displaced by an expression of troubled anxiety. Her careless attire, and unusual fits of abstraction, at length led the King to suppose that some domestic distress had a principal share in so painful a change; he interrogated Kara Aziek: as they walked together with Benzaide under the starry sky, while others slept, he gently strove to win from her the secret of her affliction; Kara Aziek alternately blushed and turned pale, sighed and wept, but refused to satisfy him. Such conduct only stimulated the efforts of a friend whose tenderness was increased by this first call upon its sympathy; but Aziek, mildly inflexible, constantly left him at the usual hour in doubt and conjecture. CHAP. III.