midnight
At that moment the valet opened the door as if in answer to his master 's summons . The Count looked round , thus giving me time to slip away ; when he glanced again at the mirror I had disappeared . Then the thought came to him that the image he had seen within the glass was only the reflection of some one standing in the alcove ; he ordered the valet to look within the inner part of the room , and when the servant man assured him that there was nobody , he ventured to look in it himself . The valet swore that nobody had come in the house , and by the time the servants returned from midnight Mass I was already far away . `` The Count had not been well for some days , and the shock he received upset his nerves in such a way that he took to his bed with a kind of brain fever . I attended him during his illness whilst he was delirious , and when he recovered he had a slight remembrance of me , just as of a vision we happen to see in a dream . He asked if a young girl had not tended him during his illness ; his valet and the other servants told him that a mysterious stranger had come to take care of him , and that she had soothed him much more by placing her hand upon his brow , than all the doctor 's stuff had done ; still , no one had ever seen her before , or knew where she had come from .