nine o'clock
He had furnished them with some care ; and after his first distress had worn off a little had found a measure of lawless satisfaction in a return to the old unmarried ways . But on this particular evening the aspect of the place appalled him from the minute he turned his latch-key in the lock . Under the stimulus of Bland 's counsels he had come home early , which was in itself a mistake . It was scarcely nine o'clock . There was an hour or an hour and a half to pass before he could think of going to bed . Any such interval as that was always the hardest feature in the day for him . But what smote him specially now was the air of emptiness and loneliness .