midnight
He looked quite scared . `` Get me a carriage , '' I said , `` and mind you do n't say anything to any one until I have gone . Then you can tell Estrella that I was feeling ill and decided to go home . '' Fortunately it was late , after midnight , and a few early ones , dragged away by their fathers and mothers , were already going ; and muffled in my long cloak and lace scarf I managed to slip out in the wake of a group of these -- hoping they would not notice my being alone -- and into my carriage , evading Jack 's insistence that he must see me home by shutting the door in his face . As the carriage went laboring off down the dark hill I crouched in a heap on the seat . If Estrella and Laura had seized me by the shoulders and bodily thrust me out of doors I could not have felt more utterly an outcast . `` Does every one feel like that about me , even my friends ? ''