midnight
He tracked her to her parentage , which was new breath blown into the sunken tradition of some Old Buccaneer and his Countess Fanny : and , a turn of great good luck helping him to a copy of the book of the MAXIMS FOR MEN , he would quote certain of the racier ones , passages of Captain John Peter Kirby 's personal adveres in various lands and waters illustrating the text , to prove that the old warrior acted by the rule of his recommendations . They had the repulsive attraction proper to rusty lumber swords and truncehons that have tasted brains . They wove no mild sort of halo for the head of a shillelagh-flourishing Whitechapel Countess descended from the writer and doer . People were willing to believe in her jump of thirty feet or more off a suburban house-top to escape durance , and her midnight storming of her lord 's town house , and ousting of him to go find his quarters at Scrope 's hotel . He , too , had his band of pugilists , as it was known ; and he might have heightened a rageing scandal . The nobleman forbore . A woman 's blow gracefully taken adds a score of inches to our stature , floor us as it may : we win the world 's after-thoughts .