'Let us—let us hope,' said the Doctor, greatly agitated.
'Thank you,' again said Leonard; and there was a pause, during which Dr. May anxiously studied the face, which had become as pale and almost as thin as when the lad had been sent off to Coombe, and infinitely older in the calm steadfastness of every feature.
'You do not look well, Leonard.'
'No; I am not quite well; but it matters very little,' he said, with a smile. 'I am well enough to make it hard to believe how soon all sense and motion will be gone out of these fingers!' and he held up his hand, and studied the minutiae of its movements with a strange grave sort of curiosity.
'Don't—don't, Leonard!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'You may be able to bear it, but I cannot.'
'I thought you would not mind, you have so often watched death.'
'Yes; but—' and he covered his face with his hands.
'I wish it did not pain you all so much,' said Leonard, quietly. 'But for that, I can feel it to be better than if I had gone in the fever, when I had no sense to think or repent; or if I had—I hardly knew my own faults.'
'You seem much happier now, my boy.'
'Yes,' said Leonard. 'I am more used to the notion, and Mr. Wilmot has been so kind. Then I am to see Ave to-morrow, if she is well enough. Henry has promised to bring her, and leave her alone with me; and I do hope—that I shall be able to convince her that it is not so very bad for me—and then she may be able to take comfort. You know she would, if she were nursing me now in my bed at Bankside; so why should she not when she sees that I don't think this any worse, but rather better?'