In the soft glow of candlelight the room looked enormous. The vista made by the two mirrors at each end and directly opposite to each other created a perspective that was without limit in its repeated reflection. The portrait gained a semblance of life from the deep shadows and high lights, and looked down from its gorgeous gilt frame on the crimson damask upholstery and rosewood carvings, with the affection that years of association had created. The gleaming mahogany floor gathered into its embrace the reflection, and in the subdued light and the strange fragrance of passed years breathing life into the speechless objects, Natalia felt that she was growing nearer to what it all represented to her than she had ever been before.
"Seventy-six years," she said again thoughtfully. "How beautiful to grow old as you have done, Uncle Felix. Nay, is it growing old? It seems to me that with you and Aunt Maria it has been a gradual growing nearer to a beautiful future life—a gentle approach towards God. I wonder if I shall grow old that way, or die in the heyday of my youth and happiness—as my mother did. To think that I never knew her," she sighed, when she had looked a long time at the portrait. "And now when I seem to think of her most, when I feel that I need her—she is gone. Can there be a greater loss to a girl than not to know a mother? And I shall never know what it is! Sometimes it makes me very sad when I realize there is no one from whom I can claim anything—no one to whom I can go and demand things because of the ties of blood. Even you and Aunt Maria are really no kin—are not tied except by love."
The old man leaned forward and turned her face towards him.
"Could any ties be stronger than those of love?" he smiled into her eyes.
"I know, dear Uncle Felix," she pressed his hands as she answered, "but the tie of blood is a very wonderful thing. It makes me feel so dreadfully lonely at times, to know that you, that Morgan, that every one is doing for me not because they ought to, but because they love me—perhaps pity me. Probably I express myself badly, and yet—you must know what I mean. It is lack of that right to lean on some one for help and protection, and feel that you are only demanding of him what it is his duty to give. That is what I expect my marriage to bring me."
Judge Houston leaned nearer to her, intently watching the changing expressions that played across her face, and which seemed to gather brilliancy from the portrait towards which she looked. His eye wandered from the painted face to the living reproduction, then back again—and between them there rose before him his old bridge of dreams—dreams which the last month had shattered. Again he felt an almost overwhelming desire to tell her of that dream which was but the reflection of the dream of another; if it were only possible to let her know of the plans and talks and hopes that he and the other one had made their guiding star for years! But he could not—his duty to her kept him silent, and in her love he realized the hopelessness of his own desires.
Then in the more than three-score years of calm restraint and self-denial, his deep affection for the man who had become his son rushed over him and made him speak.
"Natalia," he hurried over the words, "there is something I want to know—from your own lips."
"You can ask me anything, Uncle Felix." She turned her face towards him with the frankness of a child. "I have no secrets that I would not tell you."
His hand rested on her shoulder while he searched her eyes.