eight o'clock
Then she packed away her wrapper and her bedroom slippers and shook out and folded the dresses she had not worn . For a time she worked on mechanically , hardly conscious of what she was doing , hardly conscious even that she was alive . Then slowly , softly , like a gentle rain , her tears fell into the trunk , on each separate garment as she smoothed it and laid it away . At half-past eight o'clock she was waiting with her hat and coat on when Oliver came in , followed by the porter who was to take down her bags . She knew that he had brought the man in order to avoid all possibility of an emotional scene ; and she could have smiled , had her spirit been less wan and stricken , at this sign of a moral cowardice which was so characteristic . It was his way , she understood now , though she did not put the thought into words , to take what he wanted , escaping at the same time the price which nature exacts of those who have not learned to relinquish . Out of the strange colourless stillness which surrounded her , some old words of Susan 's floated back to her as if they were spoken aloud : `` A Treadwell will always get the thing he wants most in the end . ''