nine o'clock
An hour later , and there was lying in the rector 's desk a letter in which he had told Anna Ruthven how much he loved her , and had asked her to be his wife . Something whispered that she would not refuse him , and with this hope to buoy him up , his two miles walk that warm afternoon was neither long nor tiresome , and the old lady , by whose bedside he had read and prayed , was surprised to hear him as he left her door whistling an old love-tune which she , too , had known and sung fifty years before . Mrs. Julia Meredith had arrived , and the brown farmhouse was in a state of unusual excitement ; not that Captain Humphreys or his good wife , Aunt Ruth , respected very highly the great lady who had so seldom honored them with her presence , and who always tried so hard to impress them with a sense of her superiority and the mighty favor she conferred upon them by occasionally condescending to bring her aristocratic presence into their quiet , plain household , and turn it topsy-turvy . Still , she was Anna 's aunt , and then , too , it was a distinction which Aunt Ruth rather enjoyed , that of having a fashionable city woman for her guest , and so she submitted with a good grace to the breaking in upon all her customs , and uttered no word of complaint when the breakfast table waited till eight , and sometimes nine o'clock , and the freshest eggs were taken from the nest , and the cream all skimmed from the pans to gratify the lady who came down very charming and pretty in her handsome cambric wrapper , with rosebuds in her hair . She had arrived the previous night , and while the rector was penning his letter she was holding Anna 's hand in hers , and , running her eye rapidly over her face and form , was making an inventory of her charms and calculating their value . A very graceful figure , neither too short nor too tall . This she gets from the Ruthvens .