midnight
Godfrey knew all this , and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his father 's sudden fits of unrelentingness , for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy . -LRB- He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits ; _ that _ seemed to him natural enough . -RRB- Still there was just the chance , Godfrey thought , that his father 's pride might see this marriage in a light that would induce him to hush it up , rather than turn his son out and make the family the talk of the country for ten miles round . This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before him pretty closely till midnight , and he went to sleep thinking that he had done with inward debating . But when he awoke in the still morning darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts ; it was as if they had been tired out and were not to be roused to further work . Instead of arguments for confession , he could now feel the presence of nothing but its evil consequences : the old dread of disgrace came back -- the old shrinking from the thought of raising a hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy -- the old disposition to rely on chances which might be favourable to him , and save him from betrayal . Why , after all , should he cut off the hope of them by his own act ?