“While I——Ah! my child, I thank Heaven every day of my life that I am no blood relation of yours,” he added earnestly.
She heard him with a shudder, but made no reply.
“You must not call me uncle any longer, my darling. You must call me ‘Marcel,’ as you used to do. Do you hear me, Gloria? Will you call me ‘Marcel,’ as of old?”
She felt herself almost suffocating under the passion of his gaze, but she forced herself to answer, though in the lowest tone:
“I cannot do so now.”
“But why? You used to do so, my dearest. You used to call me nothing but Marcel.”
“That was—when I was a baby—or a child. I called you—what I heard others call you—as children will. I knew no better then. I know better now,” she answered, with a fruitless attempt to speak firmly; for her voice sank and almost expired, as she wished herself a thousand miles from her present seat, yet felt that she had no power to flee.
“But, my dear, you cannot go on calling me uncle, for I am not your uncle,” he answered, really pleased and flattered by the distress that he fatally misunderstood, because, in fact, it resembled the sweet confusion of the girls who had been “in love” with him in his earlier youth. “No, Gloria, you must not call me uncle,” he repeated.
“Then I must call you Colonel de Crespigney,” she replied, without raising her oppressed eyes.
“Never! that would be almost as bad as the other. No, you must call me Marcel, as you used to do. How sweetly the syllables fell, bird-like, bell-like, flute-like, from your lips, my darling.”