She answered him by asking another question:
“David Lindsay, do you really love me—love me as you said you did that morning after you saved my life, when you did not know I heard you? Say, do you really love me as much as you said then?” she breathed, in accents scarcely audible.
“Do I love you? How do I love you? How can I tell you! I have no words to tell you! But I know that I could live for you, work for you, suffer for you, yes, Heaven knows, I could give my body to be burned for you, if that could insure your welfare. And because I love you so much more than I can tell you, I repeat now that I am yours to do your will, whatever it may be; yours to attend you through life if I am to be so happy, or yours to take you to some place of safety wherever you would go, and leave you there forever, at your command. Dearest lady, you have only to command.”
She was weeping heartily now.
He gently repeated his words:
“You have only to command.”
“I cannot—command—anybody! Not even myself!” she sobbed.
“What shall I do to console you? Did I not hear that Madame de Crespigney, the colonel’s old mother, was in Washington? Shall I inquire for her and take you there, and leave you under her protection?” he asked, turning pale at the thought of what her answer might be, though no other sign, not even a falter in his voice, betrayed his inward agitation.
“No!” exclaimed Gloria. “Take me there? Why, uncle would follow me. He would not compel me to return with him, but he would persuade me. Uncle masters my will when he pleads with me, and if I return to his power he may some time, in some paroxysm of his own distress, in some moment of my own idiotic pity, induce me to become his wife, and then, when I should have done so, I should go mad, and kill him or myself. No—no—no! I must put an eternal barrier between uncle and myself. David Lindsay, I cannot trust my uncle. I cannot trust myself. I can only trust you. Say no more about taking me anywhere but before some minister of the gospel. And”—(“don’t make me do all the courting,” she was about to add, but some subtile intuition warned her that she must not turn her tragic situation into jest, even with her trusted and faithful friend.)
The carriage, meanwhile, had rolled on to Pennsylvania Avenue, and now it drew up before “Brown’s.”