midnight
While she flagged now and again , she walked without assistance , though he kept close and ready at her side . Gladys watched their progress expectantly , but her face fell as they drew near and she could discern their listless expression and manner . She did not await their arrival , but turned , disappointed , within . It was already time to dress for dinner , the ladies habitually observing this formality , although Briscoe often went in knickerbockers till midnight . Lillian paused on the veranda and gazed down the road , winding away into the dusky red flare of the fading west , for the drive must needs be short in this season of early nightfall . There was no sign of approach along its smooth and shadowy curves , and at the end of the long vista , where the jagged verges of crags serrated the serene green sky a star shone , white and splendid , amidst the vanishing vermilion suffusions of the sunset-tide . In the light of after events , one might wonder if the genial , care-free Edward Briscoe remembered any detail of the discarded arrangement of the previous evening for the transportation of his transitory guest , Frank Dean , to Shaftesville ; if he realized that at the moment when the revenue officer would have been starting on the journey , as the host had insistently planned it , he was himself at the turn of the road and just beyond the jutting crag ; if he divined that the vibrations of the telephone wire had betrayed the matter to a crafty listening ear on the party-line in the vacant hotel across the ravine -- or was the time too short for the consideration ?