nine o'clock
He did not know then , and he never knew , that she mortally disliked it , and that in a career in which she was constantly exposing herself to offence and laceration , her most poignant suffering came from the injury of her taste . She had tried to kill that nerve , to persuade herself that taste was only frivolity in the disguise of knowledge ; but her susceptibility was constantly blooming afresh and making her wonder whether an absence of nice arrangements were a necessary part of the enthusiasm of humanity . Miss Birdseye was always trying to obtain employment , lessons in drawing , orders for portraits , for poor foreign artists , as to the greatness of whose talent she pledged herself without reserve ; but in point of fact she had not the faintest sense of the scenic or plastic side of life . Toward nine o'clock the light of her hissing burners smote the majestic person of Mrs. Farrinder , who might have contributed to answer that question of Miss Chancellor 's in the negative . She was a copious , handsome woman , in whom angularity had been corrected by the air of success ; she had a rustling dress -LRB- it was evident what _ she _ thought about taste -RRB- , abundant hair of a glossy blackness , a pair of folded arms , the expression of which seemed to say that rest , in such a career as hers , was as sweet as it was brief , and a terrible regularity of feature . I apply that adjective to her fine placid mask because she seemed to face you with a question of which the answer was preordained , to ask you how a countenance could fail to be noble of which the measurements were so correct . You could contest neither the measurements nor the nobleness , and had to feel that Mrs. Farrinder imposed herself .