as utterly unhappy without some subject on which to
exercise her really remarkable powers of education. Mary's attendant
resented bitterly any rival in her certainly well-filled sphere, and
Margarita was far beyond her one-time mentor now, and regarded her
with the affectionate tolerance of a princess for her old nurse. This
was hard on the devoted Barbara, for she adored Margarita, and to find
oneself gently sliding to the foot of the pedestal, when one has not
so long ago been occupied in moulding the statue, cannot be very
enlivening, though one be never so philosophical.

In truth I had at that time a strange sensation: I found that I had
insensibly drifted into a state of mind in which we five, Roger, Miss
Jencks, Dolledge, Caliban and I seemed to be at home, contented,
occupied, attached by every interest domestic and romantic, to the
spot that was dearest on earth to us, while Margarita, a brilliant
bird of passage, but lingered with us for the moment, before she took
up her journey through the world--for that she was destined for the
world, who could doubt? We were, to use the homely old figure, like a
circle of motherly hens, staring fatalistically, sadly or disgustedly,
according to our several barnyard temperaments, at our daring,
iridescent duckling as she breasted the (to her) familiar flood.

For it was familiar: there are people for whom--taken though they may
have been from the most secluded corner of the earth, unprepared,
undisciplined, unwarned, the great world, the glitter of its
footlights, the shock of its tournaments, the cruelty of its
victories, the coldness of its neglect, have absolutely no terrors.
They face it superbly, as one should face a mob, and the great world,
like any proper mob, licks their feet and fawns on them. Admiration is
their due; devotion is no more than the sky above them or the earth
under them; they keep the divine, expectant _hauteur_ of childhood and
rule us, like the children, through our pity and our wonder. And
Margarita was one of these.

CHAPTER XXV

THE ISLAND TOMB

But to go back to Miss Jencks and Caliban. It was Harriet Buxton who
had suggested that the boy was not so deaf as we had thought, only
stupid, and that his dumbness might yield to the methods then being so
successfully used with that afflicted child who has since triumphed so
brilliantly over more than human obstacles. Although, as Harriet
pointed out, I have always felt that too much cr