about four o'clock in the afternoon
This event , of course , threw them again , for a time , into mourning . Lord Drelincourt attended the funeral of the late earl , which took place at Poppleton , and was plain and private ; and a few days afterwards , yearning to see Yatton once again , and anxious also to give his personal directions concerning very many matters which required them , he accepted an offer of a seat in the carriage of Lord De la Zouch , who was going down for a few days to Fotheringham on business of importance . Lord Drelincourt agreed to take up his abode at Fotheringham during his brief stay in Yorkshire , and to give no one at Yatton a previous intimation of his intention to pay a visit to them -- purposing , the morning after his arrival at Fotheringham , to ride over quietly , alone and unexpectedly , to the dear place of his birth , and scene of such signal trials and expected joys of restoration and reunion . 'T was about four o'clock in the afternoon of a frosty day in the early part of December ; and Dr. Tatham was sitting alone in his plainly-furnished and old-fashioned little study , beside the table on which Betty , his old housekeeper , had just laid his scanty show of tea-things -- the small , quaintly-figured round silver tea-pot having been the precious gift , more than twenty years before , of old Madam Aubrey . On his knee lay open a well-worn parchment-covered Elzevir edition of _ Thomas à Kempis _ , a constant companion of the doctor 's , which he had laid down a few moments before , in a fit of musing -- and was gazing in the direction of the old yew-tree , a portion of which , with a gray crumbling corner of his church , at only some two dozen yards ' distance , was visible through the window . On one side of his book-shelves hung his surplice on one peg , and on another his gown ; and on the other his rusty shovel-hat and walking-stick . Over the mantelpiece were suspended two small black profile likenesses of old Squire Aubrey and Madam Aubrey , which they had themselves presented to the doctor nearly thirty years before .