About eleven o'clock
`` No more than you are , dear , '' she said , gravely . He looked at her with sudden suspicion , but she was not smiling . `` Very well , '' he said , gloomily . About eleven o'clock he had sauntered half the distance down the forest road that leads to the Château de Nesville . His heart seemed to tug and tug and urge him forward ; his legs refused obedience ; he sulked . But there was the fresh smell of loam and moss and aromatic leaves , the music of the Lisse on the pebbles , the joyous chorus of feathered creatures from every thicket , and there were the antics of the giddy young rabbits that scuttled through the warrens , leaping , tumbling , sitting up , lop-eared and impudent , or diving head-first into their burrows . Under the stems of a thorn thicket two cock-pheasants were having a difference , and were enthusiastically settling that difference in the approved method of game-cocks .