'Try to rest now, for you are very tired.' 'Rest ?' cried the Princess, starting up in bed and leaning on one hand.

'How can I rest when it torments me day and night?
I come to you for absolution and you refuse it, and tell me to rest!' She broke into a wild laugh again, but Sister Giovanna instantly seized her arm as she had done before, and spoke in the same commanding way.
'Be silent!' she said energetically.
The delirious woman began to whine.
'You are so rough, Father--so unkind to-day! What is the matter with you?
You never treated me like this before!' She was sobbing the next moment, and real tears trickled through her fingers as she covered her face with her hands.
'You see--how--how penitent I am!' she managed to cry in a broken voice.
'Have pity, Father!' She was crying bitterly, but though she was out of her mind the nun could not help feeling that she was acting a part, even in her delirium, and in spite of the tears that forced themselves through her hands and ran down, wetting the lace and spotting the scarlet ribbons of her elaborate nightdress.

Sister Giovanna put aside the thought as a possibly unjust judgment, and tried to quiet her.
'If you are really sorry for what you did, you will be forgiven,' said the nun.
This produced an immediate effect: the sobbing subsided, the tears ceased to flow, and the Princess repeated the Act of Contrition in a low voice; then she folded her hands and waited in silence.

Sister Giovanna stood upright beside the pillows, and prayed very earnestly in her heart that she might forget what she had heard, or at least bear her aunt no grudge for the irreparable wrong.
But the delirious woman, who still fancied that her nurse was her confessor, was waiting for the words of absolution, and after a few moments, as she did not hear them, she broke out again in senseless terror, with sobbing and more tears.

She grasped the Sister's arms wildly and dragged herself up till she was on her knees in bed, imploring and weeping, pleading and sobbing, while she trembled visibly from head to foot.
The case was a difficult one, even for an experienced nurse.