noon
Thaddeus felt this benumbing effect in every pulse of his ardent and energetic heart . He retraced all that he had been . He looked on what he was . Though he had reaped glory when a boy , his `` noon of manhood , '' his evening sun , was to waste its light and set in an English prison . At short and distant intervals such melancholy reveries gave place to the pitying image of Mary Beaufort . It sometimes visited him in the day -- it always was his companion during the night . He courted her lovely ideal as a spell that for a while stole him from painful reflections .