"And your mistress was shut up, I hear, in the dining-room all the time with little George." "Oh yes," said Prance, "and the servants were shut up downstairs. Nobody could have gone near the room. If that door was fastened, why, the bolt must have slipped as well as the latch when the child closed it," added Prance. "The coroner and jury thought so." Mrs. Darling sighed in very perplexity. She could not get over Honour's positive and solemn assertion; but it seemed equally impossible to believe any one had been near the door to bolt it. This last suggestion, that the bolt had slipped, was a welcome one, and Mrs. Darling would have given half her remaining lifetime to have been able fully to believe in it. There went forth another announcement in the local papers, Mrs. Darling wording it. "Died, on St. Martin's Eve, at Alnwick Hall, on his fifth birthday, Benjamin Carleton St. John, eldest son and heir of the late George Carleton St. John, Esquire." CHAPTER XVII. HONOUR'S RAVINGS. It needed not many days for Honour Tritton to be in a fever, accompanied by delirium, the symptoms of which had been plainly showing themselves. Mr. Pym pronounced it a malady of the brain, brought on by grief, horror, and remorse. It would prolong her stay at the Hall, for she could not be removed; otherwise Mrs. St. John had given her notice to quit it as soon as the funeral was over. Mrs. St. John had taken a shuddering dislike to her. The word is used advisedly. Once or twice, when she met Honour in the corridors, she was seized with a fit of shuddering that affected her whole frame. Freely she avowed that she could not bear the sight of the girl; but for her, she said, Benja would be still living. But when the girl was taken ill they could not turn her out; and Honour lay in bed, in the room that had been hers and Benja's. The pretty rosewood cot, shorn for ever of its occupant, was yet in the corner. At first she was not dangerously ill; hot and feverish, and a little excited at times; but not in danger. It was the day before the funeral that she took to her bed.