eleven o'clock
There was some climbing to be done , and the man was old and stiff in the joints . The place was not so easy to find as might have been supposed , either , after the first breach in the Roman wall was past . Malipieri intended to improve the passage the next morning , in order to make it more practicable for Sabina . He racked his brains for an explanation of the mystery , and when he reached the door of the palace , after eleven o'clock , he had come to the conclusion that in spite of appearances there must be some entrance to the vaults of which he knew nothing , and it was all-important to find it . He regretted the quixotic impulse which had restrained him from exploring everything at once . It would have been far better to go to the end of his discovery , and he wondered why he had not done go . He would not have insulted himself by supposing that Sabina could believe him capable of taking the gem from the ring of the statue , in other words , of stealing , since whoever the rightful owner might be , nothing in the vault could possibly belong to him , and he regarded it all as her property , though he doubted whether he could ever obtain for her a tenth part of the value it represented .