midnight
De Vayne had been but little in Saint Werner 's society , and had rarely seen any but his few chosen friends ; and that such a calamity should have happened in the rooms and at the table of one of those friends , -- that Kennedy , whom he so much loved and admired , should be suspected of being privy to it ; -- this fact was one which made De Vayne 's heart sink within him with anguish and horror , and a weariness of life . And in those troubled waters of painful thought floated the broken gleams of a golden phantasy , the rainbow-coloured memories of a secret love . They came like a light upon the darkened waves , yet a light too feeble to dissipate the under gloom . Like the phosphorescent flashes in the sea at midnight , which the lonely voyager , watching with interest as they glow in the white wake of the keel , guesses that they may be the heralds of a storm , -- so these bright reminiscences of happier days only gave a weird beauty to the tumult of the sick boy 's mind ; and the mother , as she sat by him night and day during the crisis of his suffering , listened with a deeper anxiety for future trouble to the delirious revelations of his love . For Lady De Vayne had come from Other Hall to nurse her sick son . She slept on a sofa in his sitting-room , and nursed him with such tenderness as only a mother can . There was no immediate possibility of removing him ; deep , unbroken quiet was his only chance of life .