midnight
It was what in these weeks he was living for -- since he really felt life to begin but after Mrs. Muldoon had retired from the scene and , visiting the ample house from attic to cellar , making sure he was alone , he knew himself in safe possession and , as he tacitly expressed it , let himself go . He sometimes came twice in the twenty-four hours ; the moments he liked best were those of gathering dusk , of the short autumn twilight ; this was the time of which , again and again , he found himself hoping most . Then he could , as seemed to him , most intimately wander and wait , linger and listen , feel his fine attention , never in his life before so fine , on the pulse of the great vague place : he preferred the lampless hour and only wished he might have prolonged each day the deep crepuscular spell . Later -- rarely much before midnight , but then for a considerable vigil -- he watched with his glimmering light ; moving slowly , holding it high , playing it far , rejoicing above all , as much as he might , in open vistas , reaches of communication between rooms and by passages ; the long straight chance or show , as he would have called it , for the revelation he pretended to invite . It was a practice he found he could perfectly `` work '' without exciting remark ; no one was in the least the wiser for it ; even Alice Staverton , who was moreover a well of discretion , did n't quite fully imagine . He let himself in and let himself out with the assurance of calm proprietorship ; and accident so far favoured him that , if a fat Avenue `` officer '' had happened on occasion to see him entering at eleven-thirty , he had never yet , to the best of his belief , been noticed as emerging at two . He walked there on the crisp November nights , arrived regularly at the evening 's end ; it was as easy to do this after dining out as to take his way to a club or to his hotel .