midnight
The weeks elapsed , however , without Odo 's hearing further of the matter , and it had nearly passed from his mind when one August day he received word that the Marquess hoped for his company that evening . He was in that mood of careless acquiescence when any novelty invites , and the heavy warmth of the summer night seemed the accomplice of his humour . Cloaked and masked , he stepped into his gondola and was swept rapidly along the Grand Canal and through winding channels to the Giudecca . It was close on midnight and all Venice was abroad . Gondolas laden with musicians and hung with coloured lamps lay beneath the palace windows or drifted out on the oily reaches of the lagoon . There was no moon , and the side-canals were dark and noiseless but for the hundreds of caged nightingales that made every byway musical . As his prow slipped past garden walls and under the blackness of low-ached bridges Odo felt the fathomless mystery of the Venetian night : not the open night of the lagoons , but the secret dusk of nameless waterways between blind windows and complaisant gates .