midnight before
The lady settled herself deeper into her furs and sighed . She continued to sigh at intervals during the remainder of the trip . The last and the heaviest sigh of all she heaved when she settled down to sleep in a hotel bedroom and thought miserably of a certain lovable , if somewhat headstrong , young man who was out somewhere in these terrible mountains in the storm , hiding away from the world and perhaps suffering cold and hunger . Thoughts of that kind are not the best medicine for sleeplessness , and it was long after midnight before Mrs. Singleton Corey drifted insensibly from heartsick reflections into the inconsequent imaginings of dreams . She did not dream about Jack , which was some comfort ; instead , she dreamed that she was presiding over a meeting of her favorite club . She awoke to the chill of an unheated room during a winter storm . The quiet lulled her at first into the belief that it was yet very early , but sounds of clashing dishes in a pan somewhere in a room beneath her seemed to indicate breakfast .