about three o'clock in the afternoon
But of all the curious and strange things that ever did happen to Vera , this was certainly the strangest and the most curious . It makes a somewhat exasperating narrative , because the affair ended -- or , rather , Vera caused it to end -- on a note of interrogation . The reader may , however , draw consolation from the fact that , if he is tormented by an unanswerable query , Vera herself was much more tormented by precisely the same query . Two days before Christmas , at about three o'clock in the afternoon , just when it was getting dusk and the distant smokepall of the Five Towns was merging in the general greyness of the northern sky , Vera was sitting in the bow-window of the drawing-room of Stephen Cheswardine 's newly-acquired house at Sneyd ; Sneyd being the fashionable suburb of the Five Towns , graced by the near presence of a countess . And as the slim , thirty-year-old Vera sat there , moody -LRB- for reasons which will soon appear -RRB- , in her charming teagown , her husband drove up to the door in the dogcart , and he was not alone . He had with him a man of vigorous and dashing appearance , fair , far from ugly , and with a masterful face , keen eyes , and most magnificent furs round about him . At sight of the visitor Vera 's heart did not exactly jump , but it nearly jumped .