midnight
The week passed in such mental torture as tries the strong when confronted by the major force of conscience . Then the doctor told him that he had balked the plague ; that Kate was recovering from varioloid ; that beyond a transparency of skin , which would add to her beauty rather than impair it , there would be no sign of the attack . Elisha Boone slept in his own home that night , and , for the first time in forty years , he fell upon his knees -- upon his knees ! Indeed , the doctor found him so at midnight , when he came with a request from his daughter to come to her room . The doctor , with a word of warning against agitating the sufferer , wisely retired from the solemn reconciliation which , without knowing the circumstances , he knew was to take place between father and child . She was propped up upon pillows whose texture her flesh rivaled in whiteness . She opened her arms as the specter of what had been her father flew to her with a stifled cry .