three o'clock
Upon this wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is like looking at intense darkness . If any distant sound be audible in this case , it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that , and all is heavier than before . The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed -LRB- not unwilling to go , for they were up all last night -RRB- , and only Mrs. Rouncewell and George keep watch in Sir Leicester 's room . As the night lags tardily on -- or rather when it seems to stop altogether , at between two and three o'clock -- they find a restless craving on him to know more about the weather , now he can not see it . Hence George , patrolling regularly every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after , extends his march to the hall-door , looks about him , and brings back the best report he can make of the worst of nights , the sleet still falling and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge . Volumnia , in her room up a retired landing on the staircase -- the second turning past the end of the carving and gilding , a cousinly room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester banished for its crimes , and commanding in the day a solemn yard planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black tea -- is a prey to horrors of many kinds . Not last nor least among them , possibly , is a horror of what may befall her little income in the event , as she expresses it , `` of anything happening '' to Sir Leicester .