midnight
`` It _ is _ rather alarming , '' I admitted . `` A mere fit of sneezing , '' he went on ; `` but you are now able to judge , from the events of to-night , how extremely hard it is for us , with the best intentions , to communicate coherently with the embodied world . Why , there is the Puddifant ghost -- in Lord Puddifant 's family , you know : _ he _ has been trying for generations to inform his descendants that the drainage of the castle is execrable . Yet he can never come nearer what he means than taking the form of a shadowy hearse-and-four , and driving round and round Castle Puddifant at midnight . And old Lady Wadham 's ghost , what a sufferer that woman is ! She merely desires to remark that the family diamonds , lost many years ago , were never really taken abroad by the valet and sold . He only had time to conceal them in a secret drawer behind the dining-room chimney-piece .