midnight
Taking for truth Amabel 's account of what she had seen and done on that fatal night -- something which he had hesitated over the previous day , but which he now found himself forced to accept or do violence to his own secret convictions -- and adding to it such facts as had come to his own knowledge in his self-imposed role of detective , he had but to test the events of that night by his present theory of Frederick 's guilt , to find them hang together in a way too complete for mistake . For what had been his reasons for charging Amabel herself with the guilt of a crime she only professed to have been a partial witness to ? They were many . First -- The forced nature of her explanations in regard to her motive for leaving a merry ball and betaking herself to the midnight road in her party dress and slippers . A woman of her well-known unsympathetic nature might use the misery of the Zabels as a pretext for slipping into town at night , but never would be influenced by it as a motive . Second -- The equally unsatisfactory nature of the reasons she gave for leaving the course she had marked out for herself and entering upon the pursuit of an unknown man into a house in which she had no personal interest and from which she had just seen a bloody dagger thrown out . The most callous of women would have shrunk from letting her curiosity carry her thus far .