midnight
Before her wide , terror-stricken gaze there rose once more the same piteous vision which had tortured her in the crisis of her love for Warkworth . Against the eternal snows which close in the lake the phantom hovered in a ghastly relief -- emaciated , with matted hair , and purpled cheeks , and eyes -- not to be borne ! -- expressing the dumb anger of a man , still young , who parts unwillingly from life in a last lonely spasm of uncomforted pain . It was midnight in the little inn at Charnex . The rain which for so many nights in this miserable June had been beating down upon the village had at last passed away . The night was clear and still -- a night when the voice of mountain torrents , far distant , might reach the ear suddenly -- sharply pure -- from the very depths of silence . Julie was in bed .