three o'clock precisely
Also he was nervously anxious to give no further cause for gossip . A sudden outward and visible cessation of his intimacy with the Quests might , he thought , give rise to surmises and suspicion in a little country town like Boisingham , where all his movements were known . So , albeit with a faint heart , he determined to go . Accordingly , at three o'clock precisely , he was shown into the drawing-room at the Oaks . Mrs. Quest was not there ; indeed he waited for ten minutes before she came in . She was pale , so pale that the blue veins on her forehead showed distinctly through her ivory skin , and there was a curious intensity about her manner which frightened him . She was very quiet also , unnaturally so , indeed ; but her quiet was of the ominous nature of the silence before the storm , and when she spoke her words were keen , and quick , and vivid .