f
unutterable anguish; and hiding her face in her veil, she burst into
tears. The tyrant was moved with her distress; for unfeeling obduracy is
the vice only of the old, whose sensibility has been worn away by the
habitual perpetration of reiterated wrongs.

He approached her with looks of kindness, and his voice was
involuntarily modulated to pity; she was, however, too much absorbed in
her own sorrows, to reply. He gazed upon her with tenderness and
admiration; and taking her hand into his own, he pressed it ardently to
his bosom: his compassion soon kindled into desire, and from soothing
her distress, he began to solicit her love. This instantly roused her
attention, and resentment now suspended her grief: she turned from him
with a firm and haughty step, and instead of answering his professions,
reproached him with her wrongs. ALMORAN, that he might at once address
her virtue and her passions, observed, that though he had loved her from
the first moment he had seen her, yet he had concealed his passion even
from her, till it had received the sanction of an invisible and superior
power; that he came, therefore, the messenger of heaven; and that he
offered her unrivalled empire and everlasting love. To this she
answered only by an impatient and fond enquiry after HAMET. 'Think not
of HAMET,' said ALMORAN; 'for why should he who is rejected of Heaven,
be still the favorite of ALMEIDA?' 'If thy hand,' said ALMEIDA, 'could
quench in everlasting darkness, that vital spark of intellectual fire,
which the word of the Almighty has kindled in my breast to burn for
ever, then might ALMEIDA cease to think of HAMET; but while that shall
live, whatever form it shall inhabit, or in whatever world it shall
reside, his image shall be for ever present, and to him shall my love be
for ever true.' This glowing declaration of her love for HAMET, was
immediately succeeded by a tender anxiety for his safety; and a sudden
reflection upon the probability of his death, and the danger of his
situation if alive, threw her again into tears.

ALMORAN, whom the ardour and impetuosity of her passions kept sometimes
silent, and sometimes threw into confusion, again attempted to sooth and
comfort her: she often urged him to tell her what was become of his
brother, and he as often evaded the question. As she was about to renew
her enquiry, and reflected that it had already been often made, and had
not yet been answered, she thought that ALMORAN had