midnight
This annoyed her -- she had not expected it . But she bore it stoically as a necessary evil . Only sometimes she thought how different all things were , seen afar and near ; and faintly sighed for that long ago lost picture of wakening fancy -- the Arcadian , impossible love-dream . She sat up till after midnight , writing to Emma Thorny-croft , the only near friend to whom she had to write , the news of her engagement -- information that for many reasons she preferred giving by pen , not words . Finishing , she put her blind aside to have one freshening look at the trees in the square . It was quite cloudless now , the moon being just rising -- the same moon that Agatha had seen , as a bright slender line appearing at street corners , on the Midsummer night when she and Nathariael Harper walked home together . She felt a deep interest in that especial moon , which seemed between its dawning and waning to have comprised the whole fate of her life .