midnight
It might well have been difficult to know HOW to take it ; and they may even say for themselves that they were a long time trying to see . As I say , to-day , '' she went on , `` it was as if I were suddenly , with a kind of horrible push , seeing through their eyes . '' On which , as to shake off her perversity , Fanny Assingham sprang up . But she remained there , under the dim illumination , and while the Colonel , with his high , dry , spare look of `` type , '' to which a certain conformity to the whiteness of inaccessible snows in his necktie , shirt-front and waistcoat gave a rigour of accent , waited , watching her , they might , at the late hour and in the still house , have been a pair of specious worldly adventurers , driven for relief , under sudden stress , to some grim midnight reckoning in an odd corner . Her attention moved mechanically over the objects of ornament disposed too freely on the walls of staircase and landing , as to which recognition , for the time , had lost both fondness and compunction . `` I can imagine the way it works , '' she said ; `` it 's so easy to understand . Yet I do n't want to be wrong , '' she the next moment broke out `` I do n't , I do n't want to be wrong ! ''