noon
But the truer a heart , the harder it is to console with the false . By and by , however , sleep , the truest of things , did for her what even the blandishments of her husband could not . When she woke in the morning , he was gone : he had thought of an emendation in a poem that had been set up the day before , and made haste to the office , lest it should be printed without the precious betterment . Mary came before noon , and found sadness where she had left joy . When she had heard as much as Letty thought proper to tell her , she was filled with indignation , and her first thought was to compass the tyrant 's own exclusion from the paradise whose gates he closed against his wife . But second thoughts are sometimes best , and she saw the next moment not only that punishment did not belong to her , but that the weight of such would fall on Letty . The sole thing she could think of to comfort her was , to ask her to spend the same evening with her in her room .