midnight
`` Ah ! that will be pleasant ; I love the de Hautervilles root and branch ; and wondered a little at their meditating a trip , with the ball for Eau Clair on the _ tapis _ . '' Our friends being safely in the rail coach _ en route _ for the city of cities , a word of Roland Douglas ; he is eldest son of the Rector of Haughton -LRB- whose acquaintance we made in earlier days on the lawn at Haughton , in chat with Col. Haughton and Trevalyon -RRB- ; his father is a Scotchman , who had accepted an English living at the request of his English wife . Roland , heir to a fine property from a Scotch uncle , had , since leaving Cambridge , been left to his own devices , they all frequently spending their holidays at his place , Atholdale , Dunkeld ; but his home was with them , he telling them `` he was too gregarious a fellow to live alone , '' that if the ghosts at Atholdale would be agreeable and change their hours of liveliness from midnight to midday , `` he might manage to live there . '' And the rectory was glad to have the life of its circle in its midst . The three Douglas children , with Vaura Vernon , had been playmates , and the days spent at Haughton Hall were among their most pleasant reminiscences . Bright , merry Roland , with courtly Guy Travers , were favourites of Vaura , each vieing with the other to win her favour , fighting her battles with biped and quadruped , both boys coming to love her with the whole strength of manhood , only to eat their hearts out alone , as others , now in her womanhood , were doing , while Vaura would tell herself , not without a heart-ache , that , `` it grieved her to say them nay , but she cared for them only in the dance , only in the sunshine ; that in the quieter walks of life , she would long for a spirit more in kinship with her quieter , her higher nature . ''