midnight
Her father was suddenly gay and smiling , with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her affection . In his good humor -- and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be kept in good humor -- he had touches of that boyish charm that had made him the _ enfant gâté _ of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and Constantinople . An _ enfant _ no more , in the robustly rotund forties , his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable . And now it suddenly struck Aimée , through her tense alarm , that his smile was not a spontaneous smile , but was silently , uneasily asking his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that something that had brought him here , at an unprecedented midnight ... that had kept him waiting until she , supposedly , should rise and dress ... . If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade -- ? The relief from that fear made everything else bearable . She was even able to entertain , with a certain welcome , the alternative alarm that he had decided to marry again -- that nightmare from whose realization the unknown gods -LRB- or more truly , the unknown goddesses of the Cairene demi-monde ! -RRB-