about noon
The worst of it was that she could not at all satisfy herself that it pleased Elinor . It pleased Philip , there was no doubt , but then it had not been intended except in a very secondary way to please him . And when the racket of the season began Mrs. Dennistoun had a good deal to bear . Philip , though he was supposed to be a man of business and employed in the city , got up about noon , which was dreadful to all her orderly country habits ; the whole afternoon through there was a perpetual tumult of visitors , who , when by chance she encountered them in the hall or on the stairs , looked at her superciliously as if she were the landlady . The man who opened the door , and brushed Philip Compton 's clothes , and was in his service , looked superciliously at her too , and declined to have anything to say to `` the visitors for down-stairs . '' A noise of laughter and loud talk was -LRB- distinctly -RRB- in her ears from noon till late at night . When Philip came home , always much later than his wife , he was in the habit of bringing men with him , whose voices rang through the house after everybody was in bed .