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!" "Will you be kind enough to let me alone," said Louis gently, but very decidedly.
This time the request was complied with, and Louis resumed his former seat, and fixing his eyes vacantly on the sweet prospect before him, ruminated with a full heart on the recent discovery; and, strange to say, though he had voluntarily promised to screen Ferrers a little longer from his justly merited disgrace, he felt as if it had been only a compulsory sense of duty and not benevolence which had led him to do so, and was inclined to murmur at his hard lot.

For some time he sat in a kind of sullen apathy, without being able to send up a prayer, even though he felt he needed help to feel rightly.