midnight
She wrote a letter to him for his mother , at her dictation , adding a little tear-blotted postscript of her own , making no mention of her own great love and the sorrow that had darkened her young life . In that letter she urged him to keep up brave spirits ; that everything was being done for Gerelda , his wife , that could be done ; that she was sitting up night and day nursing her . When Hubert Varrick received that tear-stained missive , in the loneliness of his desolate cell he bowed his head and wept like a child , crying out to Heaven that he was surely the most wretched man on God 's earth . He tried to think out all the horrors of that bitter midnight tragedy , which seemed more like a dream to him than a reality . He could not understand how Gerelda came by that wound , unless , through her terrible rage , she had attempted to take her life by her own hand ; and through the same intense rage , strong even in death , wanted to persecute him even after she had known that her moments were numbered . As for Gerelda , her life hung by the slenderest of threads for many days after , and during these anxious hours no one could induce Jessie Bain to leave her bedside . But at last the hour came when the doctors pronounced Gerelda out of danger .