ten o'clock at
night
Should he go to his club , play a game of billiards , and have some supper ? When he asked himself the question he knew that he would not go to his club , and yet he pretended to doubt about it , as he made his way to a cabstand in Tottenham Court Road . It would be slow , he told himself , to go to his club . He would have gone to see Lily Dale , only that his intimacy with Mrs. Thorne was not sufficient to justify his calling at her house between nine and ten o'clock at night . But , as he must go somewhere , -- and as his intimacy with Lady Demolines was , he thought , sufficient to justify almost anything , -- he would go to Bayswater . I regret to say that he had written a mysterious note from Paris to Madalina Demolines , saying that he should be in London on this very night , and that it was just on the cards that he might make his way up to Porchester Terrace before he went to bed . The note was mysterious , because it had neither beginning nor ending .