ten o’clock
We should have had a merry life indeed if all the splashes had sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were even then to feel about our ears . Kent Mulville had been up to his room , but had come back with a face that told as few tales as I had seen it succeed in telling on the evening I waited in the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy . I said to myself that our friend had gone out , but it was a comfort that the presence of a comparative stranger deprived us of the dreary duty of suggesting to each other , in respect of his errand , edifying possibilities in which we did n't ourselves believe . At ten o'clock he came into the drawing-room with his waistcoat much awry but his eyes sending out great signals . It was precisely with his entrance that I ceased to be vividly conscious of him . I saw that the crystal , as I had called it , had begun to swing , and I had need of my immediate attention for Miss Anvoy . Even when I was told afterwards that he had , as we might have said to-day , broken the record , the manner in which that attention had been rewarded relieved me of a sense of loss .