noon
A difference had been made in her relation to each of her companions , and what it compelled her to say to herself was that to behave as she might have behaved before would be to act , for Amerigo and Charlotte , with the highest hypocrisy . She saw in these days that a journey abroad with her father would , more than anything else , have amounted , on his part and her own , to a last expression of an ecstasy of confidence , and that the charm of the idea , in fact , had been in some such sublimity . Day after day she put off the moment of `` speaking , '' as she inwardly and very comprehensively , called it -- speaking , that is , to her father ; and all the more that she was ridden by a strange suspense as to his himself breaking silence . She gave him time , gave him , during several days , that morning , that noon , that night , and the next and the next and the next ; even made up her mind that if he stood off longer it would be proof conclusive that he too was n't at peace . They would then have been , all successfully , throwing dust in each other 's eyes ; and it would be at last as if they must turn away their faces , since the silver mist that protected them had begun to grow sensibly thin . Finally , at the end of April , she decided that if he should say nothing for another period of twenty-four hours she must take it as showing that they were , in her private phraseology , lost ; so little possible sincerity could there be in pretending to care for a journey to Spain at the approach of a summer that already promised to be hot . Such a proposal , on his lips , such an extravagance of optimism , would be HIS way of being consistent -- for that he did n't really want to move , or to move further , at the worst , than back to Fawns again , could only signify that he was n't , at heart , contented .