The rest of the party had put on their wraps by this time, and were prepared to start. Hetty wound her arm around her sister’s waist, and they walked together up the steep incline to the wide, white gate, where the Dale Farm people joined forces and set out for home. Nell stood in the moonlight, gazing after them till they had disappeared round the turning of the road, and then retraced her footsteps. As she found herself alone in the white moonlight, with only the solitude and the silence, all the forced gaiety she had maintained throughout the evening deserted her, and she staggered and caught at the slender trunk of an apple tree to prevent herself from falling, ‘Oh, my God, my God,’ she prayed, ‘how shall I bear it?’ Her eyes were strained to the starry sky; her face looked ghastly in the moonlight; her frame trembled as if she could not support herself. She might have remained thus for an indefinite time had she not been roused by the sound of her mother’s voice calling her from the farm-house door. ‘Nell, my lass, where are you? Come in quick; there’s a dear. You will catch a chill standing out there with nought on.’ She was hungering, poor mother, to take her stray lamb back to her bosom, and have her all to herself. She had seen with concern that Nell had neither eaten nor drank since she had returned home, and she feared the effect of the excitement on her health. At the sound of her appeal, Nell came slowly down the dell again, and entered the sitting-room. ‘Now, my lass,’ said Mrs Llewellyn, ‘you must just sit down here on the old settle, and eat and drink a bit. I’m afraid our fare seems different from what you’ve been accustomed to in London; but you’ll soon relish it again. London folk haven’t the appetites of country people, so they’re obliged to coax their stomachs; but you’ll take this junket, I’m sure, and a glass of wine, just to please your mother.’ And as she sat her on the settle, and pressed the dainties on her, Nell felt constrained to eat them, though they tasted like leather in her mouth. Now that the excitement was over, her white, strained looks and hollow cheeks went to her mother’s heart. ‘Ay,’ she said complainingly, ‘but you are thin and pale, my lass. I haven’t had time to see you rightly till now. Why, you’re shaking like an aspen. Have you been ill, Nell, or is this the effects of London?’ ‘No, indeed, I am not ill,’ returned Nell, with quivering lips, ‘only rather tired after my journey, and maybe the excitement of coming to my dear old home. I think I had better go to bed now. I have taken you terribly by surprise; but I’m sure you’ll find a bed for me somewhere, mother.’