midnight
She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day ; and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours . When anybody entered the room , she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous , that it frightened the poor old lady in her bed , from which she could not look without seeing Mrs. Bute 's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her , as the latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside . They seemed to lighten in the dark -LRB- for she kept the curtains closed -RRB- as she moved about the room on velvet paws like a cat . There Miss Crawley lay for days -- ever so many days -- Mr. Bute reading books of devotion to her : for nights , long nights , during which she had to hear the watchman sing , the night-light sputter ; visited at midnight , the last thing , by the stealthy apothecary ; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute 's twinkling eyes , or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary darkened ceiling . Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a regimen ; and how much more this poor old nervous victim ? It has been said that when she was in health and good spirits , this venerable inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire , but when illness overtook her , it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death , and an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner . Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are , to be sure , out of place in mere story-books , and we are not going -LRB- after the fashion of some novelists of the present day -RRB- to cajole the public into a sermon , when it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness .