midnight
When she was a child , his ungraciousness had power to darken the sunlight , but by repetition it had lost force . In haste she put on her little brown-ribboned bonnet , took the moth-eaten muff that had been her mother 's , and rejoined Mrs. Sclater and Gibbie , beaming with troubled pleasure . Life in her was strong , and their society soon enabled her to forget , not her father 's sadness , but his treatment of her . At the end of the street , they found Donal waiting them -- without greatcoat or muffler , the picture of such health as suffices to its own warmth , not a mark of the midnight student about him , and looking very different , in town-made clothes , from the Donal of the mirror . He approached and saluted her with such an air of homely grace as one might imagine that of the Red Cross Knight , when , having just put on the armour of a Christian man , from a clownish fellow he straightway appeared the goodliest knight in the company . Away they walked together westward , then turned southward . Mrs. Sclater and Gibbie led , and Ginevra followed with Donal .