arton remarked.

"Yes; but she is the best woman in the world!" answered the girl. "Oh,
if you knew what a comfort it is to be with a lady again!" And she
shuddered as she remembered her late chaperon.

"I wonder if some day--you won't think me very rude?" asked Barton--"you
would mind telling me a little of your history?"

"Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about it," answered Margaret;
"and a great deal is very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, and
everything is so quiet here, and safe and peaceful, that it frightens me
to think of things that have happened, or may happen."

"They shall never happen, if you will trust me," cried Barton, when a
carriage was heard to stop at the gateway of the garden outside.

"Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last," cried Margaret, starting to
run to the window; but she was so weak that she tripped, and would have
fallen had Barton not caught her lightly.

"Oh, how stupid you must think me!" she said, blushing. And Barton
thought he had never seen anything so pretty.

"Once for all, I don't think you stupid, or backward, or anything else
that you call yourself."

But at that very moment the door opened, and Mrs. St John Deloraine
entered, magnificently comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of
hospitality and content with existence into the room.

"Oh, _you_ are here!" she cried, "and I have almost missed you. Now you
_must_ stay to dinner. You need not dress; we are all alone, Margaret
and I."

So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochondriacs, eager for his society
(which was always cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in
vain. It was an excellent dinner; and, on the wings of the music Mrs.
St John Deloraine was playing in the front drawing-room, two happy hours
passed lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all
hours--good and evil--abide, remembered or forgotten.

CHAPTER XIII.--Another Patient.

"Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!
Comme dans le chant de Ruckert."
--Theophile Gautier.

"So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume,
a fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. 'Such an one,' he
says--meaning me, and inventors like me--'is a little crazed with the
humors of melancholy.'"

The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels
and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested
in the courage and perseverance of this s