ten o'clock
He was unforgiven -- that was the issue of it all . He had seen her who was to him simultaneously a delight and a torture , sitting in the room he had shared with her as a peculiarly privileged guest only a little earlier in the summer , and she had denied him an entrance there now . Boldwood did not hurry homeward . It was ten o'clock at least , when , walking deliberately through the lower part of Weatherbury , he heard the carrier 's spring van entering the village . The van ran to and from a town in a northern direction , and it was owned and driven by a Weatherbury man , at the door of whose house it now pulled up . The lamp fixed to the head of the hood illuminated a scarlet and gilded form , who was the first to alight . `` Ah ! ''