Twenty o'clock
The old lady seemed asleep when the girl went up afterwards , and Mabel did not like to disturb her . Neither did she like to leave the house ; so she walked by herself in the garden , thinking and hoping and fearing , till the long shadow lay across the path , and the tumbled platform of roofs was bathed in a dusty green haze from the west . As she came in she took up the evening paper , but there was no news there except to the effect that the Convention would close that afternoon . * * * * * Twenty o'clock came , but there was no sign of Oliver . The Paris volor should have arrived an hour before , but Mabel , staring out into the darkening heavens had seen the stars come out like jewels one by one , but no slender winged fish pass overhead . Of course she might have missed it ; there was no depending on its exact course ; but she had seen it a hundred times before , and wondered unreasonably why she had not seen it now . But she would not sit down to dinner , and paced up and down in her white dress , turning again and again to the window , listening to the soft rush of the trains , the faint hoots from the track , and the musical chords from the junction a mile away .