Mrs. Darling put her daughter's arm within her own and led her to her own chamber. "I will see that the dog does not annoy you again, Charlotte. Lie on the sofa and keep yourself quiet: we shall be ready to go in half-an-hour." Closing the door on Charlotte, she proceeded to Honour's chamber at the end of the passage. The girl was in bed, lying in all the restlessness of delirium. Her head was turning from side to side, her face was flushed, her speech rambled. Mrs. Darling involuntarily asked herself whether the whinings of the dog through the night in the adjoining chamber, which must have penetrated to Honour's ears, had contributed to this increase of the malady. No less than three maid-servants were posted round the bed, staring, listening, whispering. The sound of Mrs. Darling's entrance seemed to attract the attention of the patient, who looked momentarily towards her; but the ominously-bright eyes evidently saw nothing: they turned to the opposite wall, gazing, as it were, beyond it. The words that escaped from her lips--not consecutively as they are about to be written, but by fits and snatches--startled Mrs. Darling as few things had ever startled her in all her life before. They were equivalent to accusing her mistress of the _murder_ of her stepson. "He was the heir, you see, sir," she said, addressing some imaginary personage; "he was keeping her own flesh and blood out of the inheritance. I saw all along that it was more than she could bear. Don't you remember the scene that day when you came home from London, and we took the two children to meet you in the park? You took up Benja and carried him in, but the little one cried and we left him. Don't you remember it, sir?--she struck Benja to the ground and bruised him. _You_ said it was an accident, but I knew better. Oh, sir, why did you leave him under her charge? Wasn't it as well to make your will one way as the other?" She was evidently in the past, and he whom she was addressing in imagination, was her dead master. "It was so easy to accomplish!" went on Honour, her head turning faster than ever, but her eyes fixed as before. "It was only the running up the stairs from the dining-room, where she was shut in, and setting fire to him, and bolting the doors on his screams, and running back again. Oh, why did you leave him to her? Didn't you remember that he was keeping out Georgy? She says she never left the dining-room, but don't you believe her. She _did_, and I can speak to it." Mrs. Darling, who had been slowly gathering her presence of mind, and could not do it all at once, turned her ashy countenance on the gaping servants. Perhaps she hardly knew what to say, or how to treat the ravings.