midnight
Permit me to light you to your apartment , Mr. Lovel -- I am sure you have need of rest -- and I trust my ancestor is too sensible of the duties of hospitality to interfere with the repose which you have so well merited by your manly and gallant behaviour . '' So saying , the Antiquary took up a bedroom candlestick of massive silver and antique form , which , he observed , was wrought out of the silver found in the mines of the Harz mountains , and had been the property of the very personage who had supplied them with a subject for conversation . And having so said , he led the way through many a dusky and winding passage , now ascending , and anon descending again , until he came to the apartment destined for his young guest . When midnight o'er the moonless skies Her pall of transient death has spread , When mortals sleep , when spectres rise , And none are wakeful but the dead ; No bloodless shape my way pursues , No sheeted ghost my couch annoys , Visions more sad my fancy views , -- Visions of long departed joys . W. R. Spenser . When they reached the Green Room , as it was called , Oldbuck placed the candle on the toilet table , before a huge mirror with a black japanned frame , surrounded by dressing-boxes of the same , and looked around him with something of a disturbed expression of countenance . `` I am seldom in this apartment , '' he said , `` and never without yielding to a melancholy feeling -- not , of course , on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel was telling you , but owing to circumstances of an early and unhappy attachment .