midnight
I felt sure that if I only had money enough to make that fellow feel safe about his future , I could have got the prisoner away . For in my own practical , hard-headed way I had got at the maps of the country and had studied the roads and had read up every line I could find . If I try to explain what kept me a whole four weeks from accepting Miss Rossano 's invitation to call upon her at the house of her aunt , Lady Rollinson , I am not at all sure that I shall succeed ; I can say quite truly that there was not a waking hour in all that time in which she did not occupy my mind . Every morning I resolved that I would make the promised call , and every day dwindled into midnight without my having done it . I need not say that I was by this time aware of the condition of my heart . I ridiculed myself without avail , and tried to despise myself as a feather-headed fellow who had become a woman 's captive at a glance . It was certainly not her wealth and my poverty which kept me away from her , for I never gave that matter a single thought -- nor should I at any time in my life have regarded money as an inducement to marriage , or the want of it as a bar .