'I wish it was illness,' said Fernando with a shudder. 'Oh! don't go--don't let me go--if you can bear to touch me--when you know all!'
'There can't be any worse to know. You had better not talk.'
'I must! I must tell you all I really am; though you will never let your brothers come near me, or the little angels--your sisters. I'd not have dared look at them myself if I had known it, but things never seemed so to me before.'
Felix shivered at the thought of what he was to hear, but he gave himself up to listen kindly, and to his relief he gathered from the incoherent words that there was no great stain of crime, as he had feared; but that the boy had come to open his eyes to the evils of the life in which he had shared according to his age, and saw them in their foulness, and with an agonised sense of shame and pollution. Felix could not help asking whether this had long dwelt on his thoughts.
'No,' he said, 'that's the wonder! I thought myself a nice, gentlemanly, honourable fellow. Oh!' with a groan. 'Fancy that! I never thought of recollecting these things, or what they have made me. Only, somehow, when those children seemed so shocked at my advising them to hold their tongues about their bit of mischief--I thought first what fools you all were to be so scrupulous; and then I recollected the lots of things I have concealed, till I began to think, Is this honour--would it seem so to Lance--or Felix? And then came down on me the thought of what you believe, of God seeing it all, and laying it up against one for judgment; and I _know_--I _know_ it is true!' and there came another heavy groan, and the great eyes shone in the twilight in terror.
'If you know that is true,' said Felix, steadfastly and tenderly, 'you know something else too. You know Whom He sent into the world for our pardon for these things.'
There was a tightening of the grasp as if in acquiescence and comfort; but the nurse came back to tidy the room, and still Fernando clung to Felix, and would not let him go. She opened the shutters, and then both she and Felix were dismayed to see how ill and spent her patient looked; for she had slept soundly through his night of silent anguish and remorse--misery that, as Felix saw by his face, was pressing on him still with intolerable weight.