the hour of three
`` The first loyal ` gentilhome ' I have met at Paris , '' thought the Legitimist ; `` and , oh , shame ! not a Frenchman ! '' Graham Vane , now stretching himself and accepting the cigar which Lemercier offered him , said to that gentleman `` You who know your Paris by heart -- everybody and everything therein worth the knowing , with many bodies and many things that are not worth it -- can you inform me who and what is a certain lady who every fine day may be seen walking in a quiet spot at the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne , not far from the Baron de Rothschild 's villa ? The said lady arrives at this selected spot in a dark-blue coupe without armorial bearings , punctually at the hour of three . She wears always the same dress , -- a kind of gray pearl-coloured silk , with a ` cachemire ' shawl . In age she may be somewhat about twenty -- a year or so more or less -- and has a face as haunting as a Medusa 's ; not , however , a face to turn a man into a stone , but rather of the two turn a stone into a man . A clear paleness , with a bloom like an alabaster lamp with the light flashing through .