nearly eleven o'clock
His generation was slowly passing away , and its history is one of the grimmest stories untold . Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor man and read his _ Figaro _ quite placidly , like any bourgeois in the safety of the suburb , only glancing at the clock from time to time . `` He is late , '' he said once , as he folded the paper , and that was all . It was nearly eleven o'clock , and Martin had been expected to return to dinner at half-past six . Wanda was working , and she , too , glanced towards the clock at intervals . She was always uneasy about Martin , whose daring was rather of the reckless type , whose genius lay more in leadership than in strategy . As to her father , he had come through the sixties , and had survived the persecution and the dangers of Wielopolski 's day -- he could reasonably be expected to take care of himself .