body was surpriz'd at the uncourteous Behaviour of so otherwise
accomplish'd a Cavalier, but none could possibly give the least guess
at who it should be--the succeeding Diversions soon put him out of
every body's Thoughts but Zephalinda's; she well knew it could be none
but Abdelhamar, and trembled lest he should have been discovered,
fearing his concealing his Recovery, and his disrespectful Carriage
towards her Father and her Husband, might have given room to Surmises
prejudicial to her Honour: but when watching him with her Eyes, and
seeing him get off unfollow'd, or observ'd, she then began afresh to
pine at Fate, who could render Abdelhamar Conqueror in every Action
that he undertook, and only vanquish'd when he fought in hopes of
gaining her."

The Prince and his bride return to their own country to receive the
crown. By the most tender assiduities Albaraizor has almost succeeded in
gaining the love of his wife when Abdelhamar again intrudes as
ambassador to congratulate him on his coronation. Though her old love
returns more strongly than ever, the Queen guards her honor well, and
insists that her lover marry Selyma, a captive Princess. But that lady,
stung by Abdelhamar's indifference, learns to hate him, and out of
revenge persuades the King that his wife is unfaithful to him. An
indiscreet letter from Abdelhamar confirms his suspicions. He orders
both Queen and ambassador cast into prison and by his woes destroys the
happiness of the whole court.

The passages relating the monarch's love and jealousy are described with
a fulness entirely lacking in the tournament scene quoted above, and we
may fairly infer that both writer and reader were more deeply interested
in affairs of the heart than in feats of arms, however glorious. The
emphasis given to love rather than to war in this tale is significant as
a contrast to the opposite tendency in such romances of a century later
as "Ivanhoe," in which a tournament scene very similar in outline to
that in "The Arragonian Queen" is told with the greatest attention to
warlike detail, while the love story, though not allowed to languish, is
kept distinctly subordinate to the narrative of chivalric adventure.
Mrs. Haywood, however, was too warm-blooded a creature to put aside the
interests of the heart for the sake of a barbarous Gothic brawl, and too
experienced a writer not to know that her greatest forte lay in painting
the tender rather than