Oh_Yikes

Hi all, I've been an avid reader of this forum and enormous thanks to everyone for their very helpful contributions! I'll try to make this as quick and painless as possible: I graduated from a decent-but-not-great college several years ago. I did well there, well enough to be accepted to a very prestigious university for a partially-funded master's degree in history, so off I went to begin what I thought would be a marvelous intellectual journey, culminating in more academic honors and degrees and tenured-track job offers, blah, blah, blah. The obvious punchline, of course, is that I arrived at my new university and it became very apparent very quickly that I was in way over my head and my coursemates were far ahead of me in terms of training and historical thinking. I really struggled with historiography (TBH, I'm not sure I understood what historiography actually was). Worse, my initial supervisor left for a fellowship after my first term and my second supervisor made it very clear that he only took me on because he had no choice, and he thought my work was uninteresting, substandard, and that I would be unlikely to graduate. I busted my tail off, and I did pass the program, but my marks were nothing special and the experience terrified me (I'd leave for supervisions a half hour early to allow time for a good anxiety vomit). I still loved history, but serious work in the field seemed beyond my capabilities and I knew I'd have no chance for PhD admissions. I joined the 'real world,' and got a job. Fast forward to now: I work in a field that allows me access to new historical publications and I regularly correspond with historians about their work and interests and this job has reignited my love for the field. I am far more mature and thoughtful now and I miss research desperately. I've also stumbled onto new interests that I am keen to explore in a formal academic setting. I am considering taking the plunge again. I don't feel ready at all for a PhD yet and I have the marvelous advantage of having an employer that would pay for a large part of my education, so I think applying for a part time master's degree would be the best way forward. But if my goal is an eventual PhD program, how do I explain the lackluster results from my first master's degree? There seems to be a lot of thought in these forums that a subpar bachelor's degree can be mitigated by good MA work, but can a second MA compensate for a lackluster first or am I kidding myself? Thanks so much for your thoughts!