about
six o'clock
And when the young forester had taken his departure , Mrs. Halsey stroked the red flannel round her swollen neck complacently . `` I ` ad to pike ` im out soomhow . It 's ` igh time she wor put to bed ! '' That same evening , Ellesborough left the Ralstone camp behind him about six o'clock , and hurried through the late October evening towards Great End Farm . During the forty-eight hours which had elapsed since his interview with Rachel he had passed through much suffering , and agonies of indecision . He had had to reconstruct all his ideas of the woman he loved . Instead of the proud and virginal creature he had imagined himself to be wooing , amid the beautiful setting of her harvest fields , he had to think of her as a woman dimmed and besmirched by an unhappy marriage with a bad man .