midnight
The motive which no man or woman could make or even modify , was the prime spring as well as ruler of the will , cropping out , to use his own words , from moral , if not also physical causes , laid when God said , `` Let there be light , and there was light . '' A deeper thinker than most of her sex , she felt `` the sublimity in terror '' of this view of God 's ways with man . If she could not resist the resolution to love Walter , how could he resist the love he bore to another ? The thought shook her to the heart ; nor was she less pained when she reflected on the hapless Paul , with his long-concealed affection , so pure from the sordidness of a desire for money , that he would have toiled for her under the flame of the midnight lamp , continued into the light of the rising sun . During the night the persistency of her resolution to remain by her past affection was maintained ; yet as it was still merely a persistency implying the continuance of a foe ready to assert the old rights , she was so far unhappy that she wanted that composure of mind which consists in the absence of conflict among one 's own thoughts . In the morning she found the locket lying on her parlour table , with the inscription changed from Agnes Ainslie to Rachel Grierson . She took it up and fixed her eyes upon it .