midnight
He did so , very modestly and tenderly , and I assumed , though he himself clearly cared nothing for the danger , that the solemnity of the occasion , largely made up of persons who had known them both and had a sense of the long joke , would sufficiently deprive his presence of all light association . On the question of what had happened the evening of her death little more passed between us ; I had been overtaken by a horror of the element of evidence . It seemed gross and prying on either hypothesis . He , on his side , had none to produce , none at least but a statement of his house-porter -- on his own admission a most casual and intermittent personage -- that between the hours of ten o'clock and midnight no less than three ladies in deep black had flitted in and out of the place . This proved far too much ; we had neither of us any use for three . He knew that I considered I had accounted for every fragment of her time , and we dropped the matter as settled ; we abstained from further discussion . What I knew however was that he abstained to please me rather than because he yielded to my reasons .