midnight
It was a July evening , and they were quite alone on board the little steam yacht the `` Thetis . '' She remembered it all very plainly . It had been so warm that she had not changed her dress after dinner -- she recalled that it was of Honiton lace over old-rose silk , and that Curtis had said it was the prettiest he had ever seen . It was an hour before midnight , and the lake was so still as to appear veritably solid . The moon was reflected upon the surface with never a ripple to blur its image . The sky was grey with starlight , and only a vague bar of black between the star shimmer and the pale shield of the water marked the shore line . Never since that night could she hear the call of whip-poor-wills or the piping of night frogs that the scene did not come back to her .