seven o'clock
`` I 'll be colder yet , soon , '' he said calmly , and she was forced to go away . She guessed that Andrew 's sense of dramatic fitness made him wish to make his last entry on the stage alone . So she went back to her room and stood looking out over Lashnagar , where the autumn mists stalked and mowed at each other and fluttered and jostled and fought . Before seven o'clock the book-room was full of people , soaked through with the mist . They were the people Marcella had known all her life -- fisher-folk , farm labourers , crofters -- and she felt a momentary exultant pride to think that , at a word from her father , they had thronged to his house . There seemed something fitting in their coming on All Souls ' Night into this bare room with the tattered pennant and the crackling wood fire that flickered on their weather-beaten faces . Their coming obediently to be talked to by her father for the good of their souls gave her a sense of savage exaltation for the moment .