Ferrers then in broken sentences renewed his thanks, and Louis, after hearing a few in silence, as if he heard nothing, turned his full moist eyes on him with a sorrowful beseeching look,
“You have done a very wicked thing, Ferrers. Oh do pray to God to forgive you.”
“I will try to do any thing you wish,” replied Ferrers.
“A prayer because I wished, could do you no good. You must feel you have sinned against God. Do try to think of this. If it should make you do so, I think I could cheerfully bear this disgrace a little longer for you, though what it is to bear I cannot tell you.”
“You are almost an angel, Louis!” exclaimed Ferrers.
“Oh don't say such things to me, Ferrers,” said Louis, “pray don't. I am not more so than I was before this—I am but a sinful creature like yourself, and it is the remembrance of this that makes me pity you. Now do leave me alone; I cannot bear to hear you flatter me now.”
Ferrers lingered yet, though Louis moved from him with a shuddering abhorrence of the fawning, creeping manner of his school-fellow. Seeing that Ferrers still loitered near him, he asked if there were any thing more to say.
“Will your brother know this?”
“Reginald?” replied Louis. “Of course—no—I shall not tell him.”
“A thousand thousand times I thank you,—oh Louis, Louis, you are too good!”