three o'clock in the afternoon
Still , he could smile now -- rather slowly , rather faintly , it is true ; but a day or two before , Margaret never thought to see him smile again . It was about two miles from their house in Crampton Crescent to Marlborough Street . It was too hot to walk very quickly . An August sun beat straight down into the street at three o'clock in the afternoon . Margaret went along , without noticing anything very different from usual in the first mile and a half of her journey ; she was absorbed in her own thoughts , and had learnt by this time to thread her way through the irregular stream of human beings that flowed through Milton streets . But , by and by , she was struck with an unusual heaving among the mass of people in the crowded road on which she was entering . They did not appear to be moving on , so much as talking , and listening , and buzzing with excitement , without much stirring from the spot where they might happen to be .