three minutes past eight
`` But I do n't want -- come and help me , Halton . I believe you know things I do n't . '' Halton had been with the lovely Mrs. Charlton Hoey before she came to Charmian , and she did know things unknown to her young mistress . Trusted , she was ready to reveal them , and Charmian went downstairs at three minutes past eight more ingenious than she had been at ten minutes before that hour . Although she was quite , quite certain that neither her mother nor Claude Heath would discover what had been done with Halton 's assistance , she was nevertheless sufficiently uncertain to feel a tremor as she put her hand on the drawing-room door , and it was a tremor in which a sense of shame had a part . Claude Heath was in the room with Mrs. Mansfield . As Charmian looked at him getting quickly up from the sofa where he had been sitting he seemed to her a stranger .