nearly eight o'clock
Kalmon was a bachelor and a man of assured position , and it had cost him nothing to undertake to give Regina his protection ; but Marcello was deeply grateful . He had already made up his mind as to what he would do next . It had stopped raining at last , and the wind had fallen to a soft breeze that bore the morning mist gently away towards the sea , and hardly stirred the wet leaves that strewed the road all the way up to San Pietro in Montorio . Marcello found the gate of the villa already open , for it was nearly eight o'clock by the time he got there . He summoned the servants to the library , told them briefly what had happened , and warned them that they might be summoned as witnesses at the coming trial , as most of them had been in his mother 's service . In the days before Corbario had lost his head , and when he had controlled the household , it had been a part of his policy to have really respectable servants about him , and though some of them had never quite trusted him , they had all been devoted to the Signora and to Marcello . They listened in respectful silence now , and waited till he was out of the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to decide that Corbario had got his deserts at last .