one o'clock in the morning
It was just toward the close of the dinner-hour that Marsham caught the Speaker 's eye . Perhaps the special effort that had been necessary to recall his thoughts to the point had given his nerves a stimulus . At any rate , he spoke unusually well , and sat down amid the cheers of his party , conscious that he had advanced his Parliamentary career . A good many congratulations reached him during the evening ; he `` drank delight of battle with his peers , '' for the division went well , and when he left the House at one o'clock in the morning it was in a mood of tingling exhilaration , and with a sense of heightened powers . It was not till he reached his own room , in his mother 's hushed and darkened house , that he opened Diana 's letter . The mere sight of it , as he drew it out of his pocket , jarred upon him strangely . It recalled to him the fears and discomforts , the sense of sudden misfortune and of ugly associations , which had been , for a time , obliterated in the stress and interest of politics .