twenty-seven
minutes after eight
She saw again a dark figure approaching on the road outside , and she thought with a great throb of joy that he had surely come , but the figure did not enter the grounds . She allowed twenty-five minutes for him to walk from the station . She said to herself if , when twenty-five minutes had elapsed , he had not come , she should certainly know that he had not come on that train . She did not dare look at the clock , but after a while , when she did so , she found it was twenty-seven minutes after eight . Still that clock often gained . She ran out in the kitchen and looked at the clock there , but that had stopped at half-past seven . It was very seldom that anybody remembered to wind up the kitchen-clock since Marie went .