midnight
`` And so can Mobile , '' said the Callenders to the Valcours . `` The fortunes of our two cities are one ! '' cried Constance , and the smiling Valcours were inwardly glad to assent , believing New Orleans doomed , and remembering their Mobile home burned for the defence of the two cities of one fortune . However , the Camp Villeré regiment had not got off , but would move at midnight . On the train with them Hilary was sending recruits to the battery , younger brothers of those who had gone the year before . He had expected to conduct , not send , them , but important work justified -- as Anna told Flora -- his lingering until his uncle should bid him come . Which bidding Irby might easily have incited , by telegraph , had Flora let him .