nine o'clock
Mademoiselle is very ill ! She 's spitting blood ! '' On rising from the dinner-table the doctor spoke to his wife of a confinement case , in close attendance on which he would doubtless have to pass the night . He quitted the house at nine o'clock , walked down to the riverside , and paced along the deserted quays in the dense nocturnal darkness . A slight moist wind was blowing , and the swollen Seine rolled on in inky waves . As soon as eleven o'clock chimed , he walked up the slopes of the Trocadero , and began to prowl round the house , the huge square pile of which seemed but a deepening of the gloom . Lights could still be seen streaming through the dining-room windows of Helene 's lodging .