nine o'clock
`` She could go nowhere else so immediately , and she would not be happy anywhere else . '' `` Let her come , then , '' said Sir Michael , `` let her come . '' He spoke in a strange , subdued voice , and with an apparent effort , as if it were painful to him to have to speak at all ; as if all this ordinary business of life were a cruel torture to him , and jarred so much upon his grief as to be almost worse to bear than that grief itself . `` Very well , my dear uncle , then all is arranged ; Alicia will be ready to start at nine o'clock . '' `` Very good , very good , '' muttered the baronet ; `` let her come if she pleases , poor child , let her come . '' He sighed heavily as he spoke in that half pitying tone of his daughter . He was thinking how comparatively indifferent he had been toward that only child for the sake of the woman now shut in the fire-lit room below .