noon
`` Sally ! '' he called , `` Sally , you do n't mean -- you do n't -- it is n't that '' -- but she was gone . _ Chapter Nine _ Madeira went off in the buckboard late that morning , and , having left word with black Chloe that he might have dinner at the Canaan Hotel , did not come home at all at noon . His daughter stayed in her room all morning , and far past her lunch hour . About the middle of the afternoon she got up from the bed where she had been lying and sat by the window that looked out across the Tigmores . Her father 's face , in its frame of entreaty , trouble , unrest , hung between her and the hills , so that , for a time , she saw nothing but Madeira .