eleven at
night
There was a regularity and yet a freedom about the life ; invisible bounds were prescribed , beyond which no right-minded or conscientious girl cared to venture , but the rules were really very few . Students might visit their friends in Kingsdene and receive them at the college . They might entertain them at luncheon or dinner or at tea in their own rooms at a fixed charge , and provided the friends left at a certain hour , and the girls themselves asked for leave of absence when they wished to remain out , and mentioned the place to which they proposed to go , no questions were asked and no objections offered . They were expected to return to the college not later than eleven at night , and one invitation to go out in the week was , as a rule , the most they ever accepted . Into this life Priscilla came , fresh from the Devonshire farm and from all the pursuits and interests which had hitherto formed her world . She had made a very firm niche for herself in Aunt Raby 's old cottage , and the dislodgment therefrom caused her for the time such mental disquiet and so many nervous and queer sensations that her pain was often acute and her sense of awkwardness considerable . Priscilla 's best in her early life always seemed but a poor affair , and she certainly neither looked nor was at her best at first here .