About noon
Miss Selina sometimes looked out too , but more often sat fidgeting and wondering why Ascott did not come ; while Miss Leaf , who never fidgeted , became gradually more and more silent . Her eyes were fixed on the door , with an expression which , if Hilary could have remembered so far back , would have been to her something not painfully new , but still more painfully old -- a look branded into her face by many an anxious hour 's listening for the footstep that never came , or only came to bring distress . It was the ineffaceable token of that long , long struggle between affection and conscience , pity and scarcely repressible contempt , which , for more than one generation , had been the appointed burden of this family -- at least the women of it -- till sometimes it seemed to hang over them almost like a fate . About noon Miss Leaf proposed calling for the hotel bill . Its length so alarmed the country ladies that Hilary suggested not staying to dine , but going immediately in search of lodgings . `` What , without a gentleman ! Impossible !