midnight
`` I leave all the romances in your hands , '' he whispered to me ; `` do let them turn out happily , do ! '' Salemina also retired to her virtuous couch , remembering that she was to visit infant schools with a great educational dignitary on the morrow . Francesca and I turned the gas entirely out , although we had been sitting all the evening in a kind of twilight , and slipping on our dressing-gowns sat again at the window for a farewell peep into the past , present , and future of the ` Brighthelmston set . ' At midnight the dowager duchess arrived . She must at least have been a dowager duchess , and if there is anything greater , within the bounds of a reasonable imagination , she was that . Long streamers of black tulle floated from a diamond soup-tureen which surmounted her hair . Narrow puffings of white traversed her black velvet gown in all directions , making her look somewhat like a railway map , and a diamond fan-chain defined , or attempted to define , what was in its nature neither definable nor confinable , to wit , her waist , or what had been , in early youth , her waist .