eleven o'clock at night
Lady Hannah had lain in bed morning after morning , for weary weeks , and watched her `` doing it , '' and wondered that any young feminine creature with such arms , such skin , and such hair should be so utterly unattractive . But she had lived all these weeks in this one room with Trudi , had languished under her handmaid 's lack of intelligence , had seen her eat , wielding her knife with marvellous dexterity , and , wakeful , tossed the while she snored . And every morning , after Mevrouw Kink had brought in coffee , snorting whenever Trudi 's hair caught her virtuous eye , or whenever the German drummer 's widow struck her as being more foreign of manners and appearance than usual , Lady Hannah would call for her boots , attire herself as for a promenade outdoors , lift the corner of a blind , steal a glance at the seething , stenching single street of Tweipans between the slats of the green shutters , and -- unpin her veil and take off her hat without a word ... . By eleven o'clock at night the polyglot confusion of tongues would have ceased , the gaudily-uniformed swaggerers , the velveteen-coated , wide-awaked loafers , the filthy tatterdemalions of all nations and their womenkind would have turned in . Then Lady Hannah , attended by the unwilling Trudi , was accustomed to venture out for what she called , with some exaggeration , `` A whiff of fresh air . '' Except for the gnawing , prowling dogs , the pickets at either end of it , and the sentries posted at longish intervals all down its length , the street of new brick and tin , and old wooden houses that made Tweipans , belonged to Lady Hannah then . Accompanied by Trudi , whose quality of being what I have heard called `` deaf-nosed '' with regard to noisy smells , she arrived at the pitch of envying , she would stumble up and down amongst the rubbish , or wade through the slush if it had been wet , and stop at favourable points to search with her night-glass for the greenish-blue glow-worm twinkles of distant Gueldersdorp , and wonder whether anybody there was thinking of her under the white stars or the drifting scud ?