“Why,” she asked of her heart in vain—“why should I feel so wounded, insulted and offended at the steady gaze of dee-ar Marcel, who loves me so truly, and whom I love and honor more than any other one in the whole world?”
She could not answer her own question. She only felt that she hated herself for entertaining such feelings, and sometimes even hated her dee-ar Marcel for inspiring them.
From some strange intuition she had ceased to call him “Marcel, dee-ar,” with tender slowness drawing out the word into two syllables, and dwelling with pathetic fondness on the first. She called him “uncle, dear,” with respectful brevity, and nothing more.
On one occasion, while she was sitting at his feet in the library, engaged with her flower embroidery in colored silks, and not daring to raise her eyes, because her burning cheeks and shrinking heart assured her that he had ceased reading and was gazing steadily upon her, he said, with a touching sadness:
“I fear that you are often dull in this lonely house, dear child.”
“Oh, no, uncle, never dull,” she answered, without raising her eyes.
“And never weary of a tiresome bookworm like me?”
“Never, uncle, dear,” she answered, kindly, touched by the pathos of his tone, but half afraid of the pity that she felt for him, lest it should lead her into some vague, ill-understood wrong or woe.
“Gloria,” he said, in a strangely earnest tone.
“Well, uncle?” she breathed, in fear of—she knew not what.