"How great is your love for Morgan Talbot?"
Natalia met his eyes seriously for a few moments; and then she laughed softly.
"What a question, Uncle Felix, and particularly when it comes from you! How great is my love for the man I am going to marry? Do you know me so little that you deem such a question necessary?"
"No. But I know you so well that I know that you will tell me the truth—that is, if you answer me seriously."
Gradually the smile faded into a pensive expression, and Natalia turned slowly back to where the gleaming portrait held her attention again.
"How great is my love," she murmured as if in self-questioning. "How great is my love? Why, Uncle Felix, how do I know how great it is? What is there for me to compare it to?"
The old man leaned towards her, and though her face was turned from him when he spoke, she felt that there was something left unsaid behind his words.
"Is this the first time you have loved? Is there nothing that went before, by which you can judge?"
"No, nothing." Natalia turned and searched his eyes for the hidden meaning. "I have never been in love before, unless—" her face flushed slightly as she found his meaning, "unless it were my old admiration for Sargent Everett. But then I was too young to know."
Judge Houston leaned back once more into the protecting shadows of the wall, it had come at last he sighed to himself, and she had been the first to mention it.