midnight before
She had danced since Gaston 's return , for the first time in eight years , she told me , having no heart to dance in that first year , when she was secretly Gaston Cheverny 's wife , because he was away at the wars , and having never seen dancing in those seven years of sorrow when she waited and longed for him . But she had not lost either her grace or her gaiety , and danced as she had done in her first girlhood . Madame Riano did some strange Scotch dances with great agility in spite of her sixty years , and rated everybody soundly who could not do the Scotch dances and did not know the Scotch airs . It was midnight before the company dispersed . I did not go to my chamber , but driven by some impulse stronger than myself , slipped out of the château and took my way toward a spot sure to be silent and deserted at this hour -- the Italian garden . A great bright moon rode in the heavens , making the landscape all black and silver . The yews and box trees were as dark as the darkest night , and the lake lay in its ever-present gloom shadowed by its sad cypresses and cedars , with but a shimmering of light in its center .