seven o'clock
All day long , and the greater part of the night , he thought about money , and yet he had escaped the spiritual corruption which the ceaseless pursuit of wealth had produced in the other rich men whom Gabriella met in his house . It was as if some subtle alchemy in his soul had transmuted the baser qualities into the pure gold of character ; and sometimes the girl wondered if the fact that he worked not for himself but for others had preserved him from the grosser contamination of money . For he seemed to think of himself so little , that after three months in his house , Gabriella was still ignorant of his interests apart from his work , except , of course , his absorbing interest in the morning papers . From the time he got up at seven o'clock until he went to bed punctually on the stroke of ten , he appeared to order his life with the single purpose of giving as little trouble as was compatible with living at all . His tastes were the simplest ; he drank only boiled water ; he ate two eggs and a roll with his coffee at breakfast ; he spent hardly a third as much on his clothes as George spent ; and beyond an occasional visit to his club in the evening , he seemed to have absolutely no recreation . His life was in the stock market , and it was a life of almost monastic simplicity and self-sacrifice . If he had any pleasure , except the pleasure of providing his wife with the money for her dinner parties , which bored him excruciatingly , Gabriella had never discovered it .