Mistrust by Matthew Gregory Lewis — Read

--"Suspicion's lurking frown and prying eye."-- / R. P. Knight's, "Landscape."

The visor of Osbright's helmet was dosed, and the exclusion of air necessarily prolonged his insensibility. When he recovered himself, the chapel was vacant, and the lamps and torches all extinguished. The total darkness, which surrounded him, added to the confusion of his ideas; and a considerable time elapsed, before he could recollect himself sufficiently to arrange in their proper order the dreadful circumstances which had just occurred. The image of his murdered brother haunted his imagination, and resisted all his efforts to chase it away. Though his own education had been received principally at the court of the Bishop of Eamberg, and therefore he had seen but little of the young Joscelyn, that little was sufficient to make him feel an affection most truly fraternal for the amiable child. Deeply therefore did he regret his loss; but yet he regretted the circumstances which attended it even more than the loss itself. His father's horrible curse still rang in his ears; the sentence of death pronounced upon himself would have sounded to him less dreadful, than that general shout of the incensed vassals--"Vengeance on the house of Orrenberg!"