midnight
The song might or might not have been intended in compliment to the fair Julia , for so I found his partner was called ; she , however , was certainly unconscious of any such application , for she never looked at the singer , but kept her eyes cast upon the floor . Her face was suffused , it is true , with a beautiful blush , and there was a gentle heaving of the bosom , but all that was doubtless caused by the exercise of the dance ; indeed , so great was her indifference that she amused herself with plucking to pieces a choice bouquet of hot-house flowers , and by the time the song was concluded the nosegay lay in ruins on the floor . The party now broke up for the night with the kind-hearted old custom of shaking hands . As I passed through the hall on my way to my chamber , the dying embers of the Yule-clog still sent forth a dusky glow , and had it not been the season when `` no spirit dares stir abroad , '' I should have been half tempted to steal from my room at midnight and peep whether the fairies might not be at their revels about the hearth . My chamber was in the old part of the mansion , the ponderous furniture of which might have been fabricated in the days of the giants . The room was panelled , with cornices of heavy carved work , in which flowers and grotesque faces were strangely intermingled , and a row of black-looking portraits stared mournfully at me from the walls . The bed was of rich though faded damask , with a lofty tester , and stood in a niche opposite a bow window .