tience with you, Mr. Barton," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine
at last, when she had so manouvred as to have some private conversation
with him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. "I've no patience with you.
Why, where is your courage? 'She has a history?' She's been persecuted.
Well, where's your chivalry? Why don't you try your fortune? There never
was a better girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she's not--when she's
not disturbed by the nervousness of an undecided young man. If you don't
take your courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off on a yachting
voyage to the Solomon Islands, or Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I
am going to take her for a drive in Battersea Park; it is handy, and
looking very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor in the wilderness. We will
get out and saunter among the ponds. I shall be tired and sit down; you
will show Margaret the marvels of natural history in the other pond, and
when you come back you will both have made up your minds!"

With this highly transparent ruse Barton expressed his content. The
carriage was sent for, and in less than half an hour Barton and Margaret
were standing alone, remote, isolated from the hum of men, looking at a
pond where some water-hens were diving, while a fish ("coarse," but not
uninteresting) occasionally flopped on the surface, The trees--it was
the last week of May--were in the earliest freshness of their foliage;
the air, for a wonder, was warm and still.

"How quiet and pretty it is!" said Margaret "Who would think we were in
London?"

Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot, mentioned by Sir Walter
Scott, he thought the more.

"Miss Burnside!" he exclaimed suddenly, "we have known each other now
for some time."

This was a self evident proposition; but Margaret felt what was coming,
and trembled. She turned for a moment, pretending to watch the movements
of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she was nerving herself to face the
hard part of her duty, and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life.

"Yes," she said at last; "we have known each other for some time, and
yet--you know nothing about me."

With these words she lifted her eyes and looked him straight in the
face. There seemed a certain pride and nobility in her he had not seen
before, though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, and there was a
mark of pain on her brow. What was she going to tell him?

Barton felt his courage come back to him.

"I know one thing about yo