nine o’clock
Never mind , I am coming -- Yours , G. SOMERSET . ' The morning after that he was up and away . Between him and Paula stretched nine hundred miles by the line of journey that he found it necessary to adopt , namely , the way of London , in order to inform his father of his movements and to make one or two business calls . The afternoon was passed in attending to these matters , the night in speeding onward , and by the time that nine o'clock sounded next morning through the sunless and leaden air of the English Channel coasts , he had reduced the number of miles on his list by two hundred , and cut off the sea from the impediments between him and Paula . On awakening from a fitful sleep in the grey dawn of the morning following he looked out upon Lyons , quiet enough now , the citizens unaroused to the daily round of bread-winning , and enveloped in a haze of fog . Six hundred and fifty miles of his journey had been got over ; there still intervened two hundred and fifty between him and the end of suspense . When he thought of that he was disinclined to pause ; and pressed on by the same train , which set him down at Marseilles at mid-day .