a quarter past two
When he looked at his engagement-book on Saturday morning , he found that Barbara had named no hour ; which was characteristic of her . When he telephoned to the house , there was no answer ; which -- by no great stretch of calumny -- was characteristic of the house in which she lived . Ninety per cent . of the people that he knew lunched at half-past one , excluding a Cabinet Minister , who lunched punctually at a quarter past two , and three Treasury clerks and one novelist who lunched at one ; accordingly , at half-past one , he presented himself in Berkeley Square , to be informed by a sedately combative butler that luncheon was at two o'clock but that Barbara was believed to be in her room . Eric followed his guide up four short flights of marble stairs and was shewn into the untidiest room that he had ever seen , filled in equal measure with the priceless and the worthless . The bindings of Riviere rubbed shoulders with tattered paper-backs ; a cabinet of Japanese porcelain was outraged by foolish , intrusive china cats ; there was a shelf of Waterford glass with a dynasty of blown-glass pigs , descending from the ten-inch-high parent to the thumb-nail baby of the litter -- gravely and ridiculously arranged in a serpentine procession . Fifty kinds of trophy adorned the mantel-piece , ranging from a West African idol at one end to a pathetic , brown-eyed Teddy Bear at the other , with stiff , conventional photographs and occasional miniatures for punctuation .