midnight
Husband and wife were nearly always in their own room when she passed . She went everywhere looking to the fastenings of the house , trying every door and window as she had done in the old days , when her husband declared the old place was only precious because it held her . Presently the servants came to look on her guardianship of the house as holy , for one night some careless person had left a light burning where the wind blew the curtains about , and they took fire , and were extinguished , by whom none knew ; but in the morning there was the charred curtain , and Molly , the kitchenmaid , confessed with tears how she had forgotten the lighted candle . The husband was the last of all to hear of these strange doings , for the new wife took care that they should never be about the house at midnight . But one night as he lay in bed he had forgotten something and asked her to fetch it from below . She looked at him with a disdain out of the mists of her black hair , which she was combing to her knee . Perhaps for a minute she resented his unfaithfulness to the dead .