two o’clock
I walked on , dreaming in full day -- I had no distinct impressions , except of the stranger beauty whom I had just seen . The more I tried to collect myself , to resume the easy , equable feelings with which I had set forth in the morning , the less self-possessed I became . There are two emergencies in which the wisest man may try to reason himself back from impulse to principle ; and try in vain : -- the one when a woman has attracted him for the first time ; the other , when , for the first time , also , she has happened to offend him . I know not how long I had been walking in the park , thus absorbed yet not thinking , when the clock of a neighbouring church struck three , and roused me to the remembrance that I had engaged to ride out with my sister at two o'clock . It would be nearly half-an-hour more before I could reach home . Never had any former appointment of mine with Clara been thus forgotten ! Love had not yet turned me selfish , as it turns all men , and even all women , more or less .