[Instructor's note: Ellen is in Scotland visiting her mother’s extended family. This excerpt is included for another use of the novel’s astronomical motif.]

[50.1] Ellen meanwhile had fled to her own room. The moonlight was quietly streaming in through the casement; it looked to her like an old friend. She threw herself down on the floor, close by the glass, and after some tears, which she could not help shedding, she raised her head and looked thoughtfully out. It was very seldom now that she had a chance of the kind; she was rarely alone but when she was busy.

[50.2] "I wonder if that same moon is this minute shining in at the glass door at home?—no, to be sure it can't this minute—what am I thinking of?—but it was there or will be there—let me see—east—west—it was there some time this morning I suppose; looking right into our old sitting-room. Oh, moon, I wish I was in your place for once, to look in there too! But it is all empty now—there's nobody there—Mr. Humphreys would be in his study—how lonely, how lonely he must be! Oh, I wish I was back there with him!—John isn't there though—no matter—he will be,—and I could do so much for Mr. Humphreys in the meanwhile. He must miss me. I wonder where John is—nobody writes to me; I should think someone might. I wonder if I am ever to see them again. Oh, he [John, also in Britain] will come to see me surely before he goes home!—but then he will have to go away without me again—I am fast now—fast enough—but oh! am I to be separated from them forever! Well!—I shall see them in heaven!" 

> Chapter 52 (end)

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