To go in the teeth of one's family is the one thing that a person of Julia's character and habits finds next to impossible.

A beneficent limitation of nature; for the cases in which the judgment of a girl of eighteen is better than that of her parents are very few.

Besides, the inevitable "heart-disease" was a specter that guarded the gates of Julia's prison.
Night after night she sat looking out over the hills sleeping in hazy darkness, toward the hollow in which stood the castle; night after night she had half-formed the purpose of visiting August, and then the life-long habit of obedience and a certain sense of delicacy held her back.

But on this night, after the consultation, she felt that she would see him if her seeing him brought down the heavens.
It was a very dark night.

She sat waiting for hours--very long hours they seemed to her--and then, at midnight, she began to get ready to start.
Only those who have taken such a step can understand the pain of deciding, the agony of misgivings in the execution, the trembling that Julia felt when she turned the brass knob on the front door and lifted the latch--lifted the latch slowly and cautiously, for it was near the door of her mother's room--and then crept out like a guilty thing into the dark dampness of the night, groping her way to the gate, and stumbling along down the road.