noon
But while I stared at him , the duke lifted his glass and bowed to me , saying , with a smile and as though he jested in some phrase of extravagant friendship for me : `` May nothing less than death part you and me ? '' And I drank the toast with him , saying `` Amen . '' A Reluctant Intrusion . As Bontet the inn-keeper set the wine on the table before the Duke of Saint-Maclou , the big clock in the hall of the inn struck noon . It is strange to me , even now when the story has grown old in my memory , to recall all that happened before the hands of that clock pointed again to twelve . And last year when I revisited the neighborhood and found a neat new house standing on the site of the ramshackle inn , I could not pass by without a queer feeling in my throat ; for it was there that the results of the duchess ' indiscretion finally worked themselves out to their unexpected , fatal , and momentous ending . Seldom , as I should suppose , has such a mixed skein of good and evil , of fatality and happiness , been spun from material no more substantial than a sportive lady 's idle freak .