Page:The Castle of Wolfenbach - Parsons - 1854.djvu/289

 arrest his fate:—the storm of passion was hushed within him, and he dissolved in kind tears of pity and contrition. The mournful tenderness of the air, declared the person from whom it came to be a sufferer; and Osbert suspected it to proceed from a prisoner like himself. The music ceased. Absorbed in wonder, he went to the grates in quest of the sweet musician, but no one was to be seen; and he was uncertain whether the sounds arose from within or from without the castle. Of the guard. who brought him his small allowance of food, he enquired concerning what he had heard; but from him he could not obtain the information he sought, and he was constrained to remain in a state of suspense.

In the mean time the castle of Athlin, and its neighbourhood was overwhelmed with distress. The news of the Earl's imprisonment at length reached the ears of the Countess, and hope once more illumined her mind. She immediately sent offers uf immense ransom to the Baron, for the restoration of her son, and the other prisoners; but the ferocity of his nature disdained an incomplete triumph. Revenge subdued his avarice; and the offers were rejected with the spurn of contempt. An additional motive, however, operated in his mind, and confirmed his purpose. The beauty of Mary had been often reported to him in terms which excited his curiosity; and an accidental view he once obtained of her, raised a passion in his soul, which the turbulence of his character would not suffer to be extinguished. Various were the schemes he had projected to obtain her, none of which had ever been executed; the possession of the Earl, was a circumstance the most favourable to his wishes; and he resolved to obtain Mary, as the future ransom of her brother. He concealed, for the present, his purpose that the tortures of anxiety and despair might operate on the mind of the Countess, to grant him an easy consent to the exchange, and to resign the victim the wife of her enemy.