noon
And `` O -- oh ! '' she still critically murmured as they moved together away . He had talked to her of their waiting in Paris , a week later , but on the spot there this period of patience suffered no great strain . He had written to his daughter , not indeed from Brighton , but directly after their return to Fawns , where they spent only forty-eight hours before resuming their journey ; and Maggie 's reply to his news was a telegram from Rome , delivered to him at noon of their fourth day and which he brought out to Charlotte , who was seated at that moment in the court of the hotel , where they had agreed that he should join her for their proceeding together to the noontide meal . His letter , at Fawns -- a letter of several pages and intended lucidly , unreservedly , in fact all but triumphantly , to inform -- had proved , on his sitting down to it , and a little to his surprise , not quite so simple a document to frame as even his due consciousness of its weight of meaning had allowed him to assume : this doubtless , however , only for reasons naturally latent in the very wealth of that consciousness , which contributed to his message something of their own quality of impatience . The main result of their talk , for the time , had been a difference in his relation to his young friend , as well as a difference , equally sensible , in her relation to himself ; and this in spite of his not having again renewed his undertaking to `` speak '' to her so far even as to tell her of the communication despatched to Rome . Delicacy , a delicacy more beautiful still , all the delicacy she should want , reigned between them -- it being rudimentary , in their actual order , that she must n't be further worried until Maggie should have put her at her ease .