noon
-- then let us go to the count 's . '' CHAPTER XXIV . The next morning Frank Hazeldean was sitting over his solitary breakfast - table . It was long past noon . The young man had risen early , it is true , to attend his military duties , but he had contracted the habit of breakfasting late . One 's appetite does not come early when one lives in London , and never goes to bed before daybreak . There was nothing very luxurious or effeminate about Frank 's rooms , though they were in a very dear street , and he paid a monstrous high price for them .