noon
What years had passed since her writing had met his eye , since the lines that bade him `` farewell , and forget ! '' Those lines had been blotted with tears , and these , as he tore open the silk that bound them -- these , the trace of tears , too , was on them ! Yet they were but few , and in tremulous characters . They ran thus : -- To-morrow , before noon , the Lord Hastings is prayed to visit one whose life he hath saddened by the thought and the accusation that she hath clouded and embittered his . KATHERINE DE BONVILLE . Leaving Hastings to such meditations of fear or of hope as these lines could call forth , we lead the reader to a room not very distant from his own , -- the room of the illustrious Friar Bungey . The ex-tregetour was standing before the captured Eureka , and gazing on it with an air of serio-comic despair and rage .