noon
At least this was the charitable opinion of the proverbially tolerant and kind-hearted Baroness Streichholzer -LRB- nee Merrydew , and relict of the late lamented Louis Sylvester , Esq. -RRB- , whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting at Wiesbaden , where the waters and reposeful surroundings strongly reminded her of Oakdale . THE HEIR OF THE McHULISHES . The consul for the United States of America at the port of St. Kentigern was sitting alone in the settled gloom of his private office . Yet it was only high noon , of a `` seasonable '' winter 's day , by the face of the clock that hung like a pallid moon on the murky wall opposite to him . What else could be seen of the apartment by the faint light that struggled through the pall of fog outside the lustreless windows presented the ordinary aspect of a business sanctum . There were a shelf of fog-bound admiralty law , one or two colored prints of ocean steamships under full steam , bow on , tremendously foreshortened , and seeming to force themselves through shadowy partitions ; there were engravings of Lincoln and Washington , as unsubstantial and shadowy as the dead themselves . Outside , against the window , which was almost level with the street , an occasional procession of black silhouetted figures of men and women , with prayer-books in their hands and gloom on their faces , seemed to be born of the fog , and prematurely to return to it .