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.
"It is a very bad case of brain fever," she said, striving to speak with unconcern. "Her mind is quite gone, poor thing,"--as indeed it was. "I had a governess once who suffered under an attack of the same. She persisted that I had killed my youngest daughter, Miss Rose Darling, and all the time the child was alive and well at her elbow. The two cases seem precisely similar. Go down, will you? I think the room ought to be kept quiet: and send one of the men instantly to hasten Mr. Pym."
They filed out of the room in obedience, and Mrs. Darling sat down to remain, thinking, poor woman, that her lines were hard just now. She sat there until the doctor entered.
"Ah, ha," said he, "so the brain's touched in earnest. I thought it would be so."
"She is quite deranged, Mr. Pym; she has been saying the strangest things."
"What things?"
Mrs. Darling turned the question off "All sorts of nonsense," she said, coughing. "Mr. Pym, I think I shall stop here and nurse her myself. She is too ill to be left to servants."
"And let Mrs. St. John go alone?"