midnight
However , we wo n't quarrel about her , and so long as she is cordial , and likes to have us here , Wimperfield can be our country house . ' This was a somewhat loose way of speaking , for Wimperfield had been Ida 's only house during her married life . Brian had his chambers in the Temple at a rent of a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year , his sitting-room furnished with none of that Spartan ruggedness which so well became George Warrington , of Pump Court , but in the willow-pattern and peacock-feather style of art ; the dingy old walls glorified by fine photographs of Gerôme 's Roman Gladiators , Phryne before her judges , Socrates searching for Alcibiades at the house of Aspasia , and enlarged carbonized portraits of the reigning beauties in London society . But these chambers , though supposed to be devoted to days of patient work and much consumption of midnight oil , had served chiefly as a basis for late breakfasts , club-dinners , and theatre-going , while the midnight oil had been mostly associated with lobster salad at snug little suppers after the play . Ida had never been at these chambers , although she had been invited there frequently during the first few months of her husband 's tenancy . As time went by Mr. Wendover found it was more convenient that his town and country residences should be completely distinct ; and it had gradually become an accepted fact at Wimperfield that Temple Chambers were a kind of habitation which a man 's wife could hardly visit without violating the first principles of legal etiquette . Brian Walford was speedily reassured as to his position at Wimperfield .