midnight
This was what Mela said for want of a better retort ; but it was not quite true . When Kendricks came with Beaton to call after her father 's dinner , she used all her cunning to ensnare him , and she had him to herself as long as Beaton stayed ; Dryfoos sent down word that he was not very well and had gone to bed . The novelty of Mela had worn off for Kendricks , and she found him , as she frankly told him , not half as entertaining as he was at Mrs. Horn 's ; but she did her best with him as the only flirtable material which had yet come to her hand . It would have been her ideal to have the young men stay till past midnight , and her father come down-stairs in his stocking-feet and tell them it was time to go . But they made a visit of decorous brevity , and Kendricks did not come again . She met him afterward , once , as she was crossing the pavement in Union Square to get into her coupe , and made the most of him ; but it was necessarily very little , and so he passed out of her life without having left any trace in her heart , though Mela had a heart that she would have put at the disposition of almost any young man that wanted it . Kendricks himself , Manhattan cockney as he was , with scarcely more out look into the average American nature than if he had been kept a prisoner in New York society all his days , perceived a property in her which forbade him as a man of conscience to trifle with her ; something earthly good and kind , if it was simple and vulgar .