midnight
-- rambling over an infinite variety of thoughts that were too foolish to be named . She was , for example , walking down a road in Northumberland in the August sunset ; at the inn she left her companion , who was Ralph Denham , and was transported , not so much by her own feet as by some invisible means , to the top of a high hill . Here the scents , the sounds among the dry heather-roots , the grass-blades pressed upon the palm of her hand , were all so perceptible that she could experience each one separately . After this her mind made excursions into the dark of the air , or settled upon the surface of the sea , which could be discovered over there , or with equal unreason it returned to its couch of bracken beneath the stars of midnight , and visited the snow valleys of the moon . These fancies would have been in no way strange , since the walls of every mind are decorated with some such tracery , but she found herself suddenly pursuing such thoughts with an extreme ardor , which became a desire to change her actual condition for something matching the conditions of her dream . Then she started ; then she awoke to the fact that Cassandra was looking at her in amazement . Cassandra would have liked to feel certain that , when Katharine made no reply at all or one wide of the mark , she was making up her mind to get married at once , but it was difficult , if this were so , to account for some remarks that Katharine let fall about the future .