midnight
In this she was right . Had his persistence equalled his insight , instead of being the spasmodic and fitful thing it was , fame and fortune need never have remained a wish with him . His freedom from conventional errors and crusted prejudices had , indeed , been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance in Hintock and its neighborhood , where people could not believe that nature herself effected cures , and that the doctor 's business was only to smooth the way . It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father 's house , now again temporarily occupied by her husband , unless he had already gone away . Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about Winterborne 's residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp autumn sky , in spite of the vault of cloud , signifying that a moon of some age was shining above its arch . The two white gates were distinct , and the white balls on the pillars , and the puddles and damp ruts left by the recent rain , had a cold , corpse-eyed luminousness . She entered by the lower gate , and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate , till she stood under a window which , if her husband were in the house , gave light to his bedchamber .