twelve
o'clock
An artist in his profession , he flattered himself that it had all come about in the manner of his own anticipations and that he would be able to carry back to London a story which would not only win upon a rich man 's gratitude , but advance him considerably in the favor of those who could well reward his labors . This was an amiable reflection and one that ministered greatly to his self-content . No cloud stood upon the horizon of his self-esteem nor did shadows darken his glowing hopes . He had promised Richard Gessner to arrest the girl Lois Boriskoff , and arrested she would be before twelve o'clock to-morrow . As for this amiable English lad , so full of fine resolutions , so defiant , so self-willed , it would be a good jest enough to clap him in a police-station for four-and-twenty hours and to bow him out again , with profuse apologies , when the girl was on her way to Petersburg to join her amiable father in the Schlusselburg . For Alban personally he had a warm regard . The very honesty of his character , his habit of saying just what he meant -LRB- so foreign to the Count 's own practice -RRB- , his ingenuous delight in all that he saw , his modern knight-errantry based upon an absurdly old-fashioned notion of right and wrong and justice and all such stuff as that , these were the very qualities to win the admiration of a man of the world who possessed none of them .