noon
He turned over the pages . `` Daughter of an English nobleman , engaged to a man she loves , perfectly happy ; but one night she is visited , or thinks she is , by her dead mother who says she will come for her daughter the next day at noon . The girl tells her father she is going to die . She reads her Bible , sings hymns to the accompaniment of a guitar , and just before noon , although apparently in excellent health , she asks to be helped to a large arm chair in her bedroom . At noon exactly she draws two or three gasping breaths and sinks back into her chair , dead . That shows what fear will do . '' But his adversary was still unconvinced .