four o'clock in the afternoon
`` You have a right to ask , ladies , but if you will excuse me I should prefer not to answer until the visit is paid . You will remember that I told you I had a reason something like your own for leaving the carriage ; and if for the present you will accept the explanation that I wish to test the accuracy of the fortune-teller without her being at all indebted to any observation of my face or any possible previous recollection of me , I shall be your debtor to the extent of a full explanation afterwards , should you think proper to demand it . '' It is not impossible that Joe Harris , who had just been congratulating herself upon a promenade with a man not only good-looking but comparatively _ young _ , may have had her personal objections to the even temporary substitution of sixty-five or seventy ; but if so , her red lip only pouted a little , and she said nothing more on the subject as the three took their way up Broadway and down Prince Street to the place where all the secrets of the past , present and future were to be revealed . It was perhaps four o'clock in the afternoon when the trio of fortune-seekers reached the door that had been designated by the advertisement as No . -- Prince Street ; and the fiery heat that had been pouring down during all the earlier part of the day was somewhat moderated by heavy clouds rising in the West and skimming half the upper sky , indicating a thunder-storm rapidly approaching . Perhaps Tom Leslie thought , as he approached the door sacred to the sublime mysteries of humbug , of the appropriateness of thunder in the heavens and lightning playing down on the beaten earth -- provided he _ should _ find the mysterious woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard , who had succeeded in giving to his frank and bold spirit the only shock it had ever received from the powers of the supernatural world . Perhaps he felt that for whatever was to come -- melancholy jest or terrible earnest -- the bursting roar of the warring elements would be a fitting accompaniment , to lend it a little dignity in the one event and to distract the overstrained attention in the other .