“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.