Nell had listened to this lengthy discourse almost in silence. She had been thinking all the time, ‘Oh, if they knew--if they only knew!’ She had tried to pull herself together several times, and laugh and chat as she had done the night before, but she had found it impossible. It was as if some weight had been attached to all her mental powers and dragged them down. She had a horrible feeling that if she spoke at all she should blurt out the truth and tell them everything. So she remained silent and miserable, wishing that she had never come back to Usk, but been drowned in the deep bosom of the Thames. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bit of a headache still, my dear,’ remarked her voluble mother, as she rose from the breakfast-table, ‘and so I won’t ask you to come round the dairy with me this morning. You’d rather rest on the sofa and read a book, I daresay?’ ‘No, no,’ cried Nell, rousing herself, ‘I’d rather go where you go, mother. I should go mad--I mean, I should feel my headache much more sitting here by myself. Let me come and see all over the dear old house with you. It will do me good--I must keep stirring, or I shall feel things--my headache, so much worse for thinking of it.’ So she made a great effort, and followed her mother on her various vocations, and made the dairymaids open their eyes to hear the refinement of her speech and to see her graceful movements and the daintiness with which her clothes were made and worn. Had they but been able to read her mind they would have seen with amazement that she shrunk from contact with them, because her dread secret was eating into her very soul and making her feel unfit to associate with her fellow-men. She had only realised the truth, and what her love for Lord Ilfracombe had made her, by fits and starts in London, but here, in the heart of God’s country, it was borne in upon her to such an extent that she felt as if every innocent animal, and fresh, modest, wild blossom must proclaim it to the world. So she went moodily about the farmhouse all day, and her mother believed that she was ill, and ransacked her brain to think of a remedy for her. In the evening, as they were all sitting quietly together (for Mrs Llewellyn had been asking her husband for some money to get Nell a new outfit, which had recalled to his mind the impoverished condition in which his daughter had returned home), who should walk in amongst them, to the general surprise, but Hugh Owen. He looked rather conscious as he entered the room, but excused his visit on the score of asking how Nell had borne her journey, and to bring her a book which he thought she might like to read. ‘You need no excuses for coming to Panty-cuckoo Farm, my lad!’ exclaimed the farmer; ‘you’re always welcome here. What’s the day? Tuesday? Ah, then to-morrow’s the grand field-night, which accounts for your having the time to come over this evening.’ The young man blushed, and looked at Nell.