midnight
She usually looked blooming and rosy , but was always tired , always had been as long as she could remember . The doctor had told Falkner after the second child came that his wife would always be a delicate woman , must be carefully protected , or she would collapse and have the fearful modern disease of nerves . So Falkner had insisted on having the best nurse obtainable to relieve her from the wearing nights , -- though it meant that somehow eighteen hundred dollars must grow of itself ! As midnight sounded from the court-house clock , Bessie laid down the magazine and stretched her tired limbs , luxuriating in the comfort of her soft bed . The story she had been reading was sentimental , -- the love of a cowboy for the fair daughter of a railroad president . She longed for the caresses of her cow-boy lover , and wondered dreamily if Lane were a devoted husband . He seemed so ; but all men were probably alike : their first desires gratified , they thought of other things .