“When are you going to tell him?”
“I cannot tell him at all—and yet he must know soon.”
“If I were you, Felix, I would take him into confidence at once. He is a good boy and sensible, and his counsel may be as worth having and following as that of any man of the world.”
“But he believes himself the heir to a fortune. It will be a terrible disappointment and come down for him.”
“Oh, no! I think not. The young do not care for money as the old do. And it is too bad to deceive him longer. Let us tell him the truth in the morning. Who knows but that he may be able to throw a little light upon the darkness?”
“Will you help me to break the news to him before you leave?”
“Yes, I will, and I cannot help hoping that good rather than harm will come of it.”
Ernest slept soundly, as a healthy boy should, whose conscience is at peace, and he awoke the next morning in a most merry mood. He opened the letter-bag, and made his sister chase him for a letter addressed to herself, and then he tossed his youngest sister into the air and caught her like a ball, after which he took her for a ride on his bicycle, until she screamed with delight.
He remembered all this years afterward; for it always seemed to him that this was the morning when he suddenly grew out of boyhood into youth.
When breakfast was finished his father sent for him into the library; and as the boy entered the room, he knew that he was going to learn something about the shadow which had so long hung above his home.