midnight
A moment of silence ensued . `` Hardly in the newspaper style , I should think , '' retorted Mr. Blunt , with one of his grins that made me doubt the stability of his feelings and the consistency of his outlook in regard to his whole tale . `` My mother 's maid took it in a fiacre very late one evening to the Pavilion and brought an answer scrawled on a scrap of paper : ` Write your messages at once ' and signed with a big capital R . So my mother sat down again to her charming writing desk and the maid made another journey in a fiacre just before midnight ; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust into my hand at the _ avanzadas _ just as I was about to start on a night patrol , together with a note asking me to call on the writer so that she might allay my mother 's anxieties by telling her how I looked . `` It was signed R only , but I guessed at once and nearly fell off my horse with surprise . '' `` You mean to say that Doña Rita was actually at the Royal Headquarters lately ? '' exclaimed Mills , with evident surprise .