midnight
`` But no man is perfect , '' she had sighed to Mrs. Rheid , `` even my poor husband would keep dinner waiting . '' After a long , absent-minded look over the meadows towards the sea , where the waves were darkening in the twilight , he arose in haste , threw off his wrapper , a gray merino affair , trimmed with quilted crimson silk , that Prudence had given him on a birthday three years ago , and went to the wash-stand to bathe his face and brush back that mass of black hair . He did not study his features as Prudence had studied hers that morning ; he knew so little about his own face that he could scarcely distinguish a good portrait of himself from a poor one ; but Prudence knew it by heart . It was a thin , delicate face , marred with much thought , the features not large , and finely cut , with deep set eyes as black as midnight , and , when they were neither grave nor stern , as soft as a dove 's eyes ; cheeks and chin were closely shaven ; his hair , a heavy black mass , was pushed back from a brow already lined with thought or care , and worn somewhat long behind the ears ; there was no hardness in any line of the face , because there was no hardness in the heart , there was sin and sorrow in the world , but he believed that God is good . The slight figure was not above medium height ; he had a stoop in the shoulders that added to his general appearance of delicacy ; he was scholarly from the crown of his black head to the very tip of his worn , velvet slipper ; his slender hands , with their perfectly kept nails , and even the stain of ink on the forefinger of his right hand , had an air of scholarship about them . His black summer suit was a perfect fit , his boots were shining , the knot of his narrow black neck tie was a little towards one side , but that was the only evidence that he was careless about his personal appearance . `` I want my boys to be neat , '' he had said once apologetically to Mrs. Devoe , when requesting her to give away his old school suit preparatory to buying another .