midnight
He wo n't be happy till he sees me married to one of these -- er -- women . Sometimes ... '' Morosely he ruminated on the suppressed adjective for a moment . `` Sometimes I feel it coming over me that the governor 's liable to be happy , according to his lights , considerably quicker than I am . '' She sat beside the wide window of her bed-chamber , on that third midnight at Gosnold House , in a state of lawless exaltation not less physical than spiritual and mental , a temper that proscribed sleep hopelessly . The window was open , the night air still and suave and warm , her sole protection a filmy negligee over a night-dress of sheerest silk and lace . And in that hour Sarah Manvers was as nearly a beautiful woman as ever she was to be -- her face faintly flushed in the rich moonlight , faintly shadowed from within by the rich darkness of her blood , her dreaming eyes twin pools of limpid shadow , her dark lips shadowed by a slight elusive smile . She was relishing the sensation of life intensely , almost painfully ; she was intensely alive for the first time in all her life , it seemed ; in throat and wrists and temples pulses sang , now soft , now loud ; and all her body glowed , from crown of head to tips of toes nestling in silken mules , with the warmth and the languor of life .