midnight
Angry duns , beggarliness of income , scarcity of the necessaries and luxuries which dignity of rank demanded , the indifference and slights of one 's equals , and the ignoring of one 's existence by exalted persons , were all hideous enough to Lord Mount Dunstan and his elder son -- but they were not so hideous as was , to his younger son , the childish , shamed frenzy of awakening to the truth that he was one of a bad lot -- a disgraceful lot , from whom nothing was expected but shifty ways , low vices , and scandals , which in the end could not even be kept out of the newspapers . The day came , in fact , when the worst of these was seized upon by them and filled their sheets with matter which for a whole season decent London avoided reading , and the fast and indecent element laughed , derided , or gloated over . The memory of the fever of the monstrous weeks which had passed at this time was not one it was wise for a man to recall . But it was not to be forgotten -- the hasty midnight arrival at Mount Dunstan of father and son , their haggard , nervous faces , their terrified discussions , and argumentative raging when they were shut up together behind locked doors , the appearance of legal advisers who looked as anxious as themselves , but failed to conceal the disgust with which they were battling , the knowledge that tongues were clacking almost hysterically in the village , and that curious faces hurried to the windows when even a menial from the great house passed , the atmosphere of below-stairs whispers , and jogged elbows , and winks , and giggles ; the final desperate , excited preparations for flight , which might be ignominiously stopped at any moment by the intervention of the law , the huddling away at night time , the hot-throated fear that the shameful , self-branding move might be too late -- the burning humiliation of knowing the inevitable result of public contempt or laughter when the world next day heard that the fugitives had put the English Channel between themselves and their country 's laws . Lord Tenham had died a few years later at Port Said , after descending into all the hells of degenerate debauch . His father had lived longer -- long enough to make of himself something horribly near an imbecile , before he died suddenly in Paris . The Mount Dunstan who succeeded him , having spent his childhood and boyhood under the shadow of the `` bad lot , '' had the character of being a big , surly , unattractive young fellow , whose eccentricity presented itself to those who knew his stock , as being of a kind which might develop at any time into any objectionable tendency .