The Emerald Catherine the Great by Hilaire Belloc

The boy Ethelbert was suffering; not from contrition -- which, I need hardly tell one of your learning, is the pure sorrow for sin -- but from attrition -- which, I need hardly tell one of your learning, is the sorrow for sin only in so far as one considers its unpleasant consequences to oneself.

The boy Ethelbert clearly appreciated that in attempting to save himself from one danger he had run himself into another far greater. He had put a valuable jewel into a nobleman's pocket and that might be, in legal terms, for all he knew, embezzlement, malversation or even a compound and chronic felony of _malice prepense_; perhaps a misdemeanour -- with which word he was familiar through the fate of an uncle of his called John.