ten in the morning
But there were certain early winter days in Casterbridge -- days of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry south-westerly tempests -- when , if the sun shone , the air was like velvet . She seized on these days for her periodical visits to the spot where her mother lay buried -- the still-used burial-ground of the old Roman-British city , whose curious feature was this , its continuity as a place of sepulture . Mrs. Henchard 's dust mingled with the dust of women who lay ornamented with glass hair-pins and amber necklaces , and men who held in their mouths coins of Hadrian , Posthumus , and the Constantines . Half-past ten in the morning was about her hour for seeking this spot -- a time when the town avenues were deserted as the avenues of Karnac . Business had long since passed down them into its daily cells , and Leisure had not arrived there . So Elizabeth-Jane walked and read , or looked over the edge of the book to think , and thus reached the churchyard . There , approaching her mother 's grave she saw a solitary dark figure in the middle of the gravel-walk .