four
o'clock
About ten o'clock one of the Towers ' carriages rolled through the lodge , and drove to different houses , wherein dwelt a woman to be honoured ; picking them up by ones or twos , till the loaded carriage drove back again through the ready portals , bowled along the smooth tree-shaded road , and deposited its covey of smartly-dressed ladies on the great flight of steps leading to the ponderous doors of Cumnor Towers . Back again to the town ; another picking up of womankind in their best clothes , and another return , and so on till the whole party were assembled either in the house or in the really beautiful gardens . After the proper amount of exhibition on the one part , and admiration on the other , had been done , there was a collation for the visitors , and some more display and admiration of the treasures inside the house . Towards four o'clock , coffee was brought round ; and this was a signal of the approaching carriage that was to take them back to their own homes ; whither they returned with the happy consciousness of a well-spent day , but with some fatigue at the long-continued exertion of behaving their best , and talking on stilts for so many hours . Nor were Lady Cumnor and her daughters free from something of the same self-approbation , and something , too , of the same fatigue ; the fatigue that always follows on conscious efforts to behave as will best please the society you are in . For the first time in her life , Molly Gibson was to be included among the guests at the Towers . She was much too young to be a visitor at the school , so it was not on that account that she was to go ; but it had so happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a `` pottering '' expedition , he had met Mr. Gibson , _ the _ doctor of the neighbourhood , coming out of the farm-house my lord was entering ; and having some small question to ask the surgeon -LRB- Lord Cumnor seldom passed any one of his acquaintance without asking a question of some sort -- not always attending to the answer ; it was his mode of conversation -RRB- , he accompanied Mr. Gibson to the out-building , to a ring in the wall of which the surgeon 's horse was fastened .