eleven o'clock
A certain prudence had determined him to put off his visit till the morning ; he thought it more probable that at that time he should be able to see Verena alone , whereas in the evening the two young women would be sure to be sitting together . When the morrow dawned , however , Basil Ransom felt none of the trepidation of the procrastinator ; he knew nothing of the reception that awaited him , but he took his way to the cottage designated to him over-night by Doctor Prance , with the step of a man much more conscious of his own purpose than of possible obstacles . He made the reflexion , as he went , that to see a place for the first time at night is like reading a foreign author in a translation . At the present hour -- it was getting towards eleven o'clock -- he felt that he was dealing with the original . The little straggling , loosely-clustered town lay along the edge of a blue inlet , on the other side of which was a low , wooded shore , with a gleam of white sand where it touched the water . The narrow bay carried the vision outward to a picture that seemed at once bright and dim -- a shining , slumbering summer sea , and a far-off , circling line of coast , which , under the August sun , was hazy and delicate . Ransom regarded the place as a town because Doctor Prance had called it one ; but it was a town where you smelt the breath of the hay in the streets and you might gather blackberries in the principal square .