midnight
He was apparently giving the house and its contents a thorough inspection , for when I arrived , Henriette was testing the fifty-thousand-dollar piano in the drawing-room for him with a brilliant rendering of `` O Promise Me . '' What decision they reached as to its tone and quality I never knew , for in spite of my hints on the subject , Henriette never spoke of the matter to me . I suppose I should have begun to guess what was happening under my very nose then , but thank Heaven I am not of a suspicious nature , and although I did n't like the looks of things , the inevitable meaning of their strange behavior never even dawned upon my mind . Even when two nights later Colonel Scrappe escorted Henriette home at midnight from a lecture on the Inscrutability of Sartor Resartus at Mrs. Gushington-Andrews 's it did not strike me as unusual , although , instead of going home immediately , as most escorts do under the circumstances , he remained about two hours testing that infernal piano again , and with the same old tune . Then the automobile rides began , and pretty nearly every morning , long before polite society was awake , Colonel Scrappe and Henriette took long runs together through the country in her Mercedes machine , for what purpose I snever knew , for whatever interest the colonel might have had in our welfare as a landlord I could not for the life of me guess how it could be extended to our automobiles . One thing I did notice , however , was a growing coldness between Henriette and Mrs. Gushington-Andrews . The latter came to a card-party at Bolivar Lodge one afternoon about two weeks after Colonel Scrappe 's return , and her greeting to her hostess instead of having the old-time effusiveness was frigid to a degree .