fifteen minutes past seven
He hazarded the guess that Mrs. Grove was often in bed until past noon ; here servants renewed the great hot-house roses with long stems , the elaborate flowers on the dining-table . In the morning , as he had foreseen , the percolator was connected , cream and sugar placed beside it ; and before his shaving was over , he had a cup of coffee with a cigarette casting up its fragrant smoke from the saucer . His shoes might have been lacquered from the heighth of the lustre rubbed into them ; a voice the perfection of trained sympathetic concern inquired for the exacted details of the suspended preparation of his eggs . * * * * * His dinner engagement with Mina Raff , arranged through her secretary , was for fifteen minutes past seven ; and , meanwhile , as Mrs. Grove had offered , Adamson drove Lee down-town . The afternoon had nearly gone before he returned to East Sixty-sixth Street ; but the maid at the door told him that there was tea up in the library . This he found to be a long gloomy room finished in a style which , he decided , might be massively Babylonian . A ponderous table for the support of weightless trifles filled the middle of the rug ; there were deep chairs of roan leather , with an immense sofa like the lounge of a club or steamer ; low bookcases with leaded glass ; and windows the upper panes of which were stained in peacock colors and geometrical design .