three o’clock
Reardon , indeed , cared little to say anything more about his own . Talk was mere vanity and vexation of spirit , for the spring of his volition seemed to be broken , and , whatever resolve he might utter , he knew that everything depended on influences he could not even foresee . Three weeks after her return from the country -- which took place a week later than that of Jasper Milvain -- Marian Yule was working one afternoon at her usual place in the Museum Reading-room . It was three o'clock , and with the interval of half an hour at midday , when she went away for a cup of tea and a sandwich , she had been closely occupied since half-past nine . Her task at present was to collect materials for a paper on ` French Authoresses of the Seventeenth Century , ' the kind of thing which her father supplied on stipulated terms for anonymous publication . Marian was by this time almost able to complete such a piece of manufacture herself and her father 's share in it was limited to a few hints and corrections . The greater part of the work by which Yule earned his moderate income was anonymous : volumes and articles which bore his signature dealt with much the same subjects as his unsigned matter , but the writing was laboured with a conscientiousness unusual in men of his position .