noon
`` I am twenty-seven years old , and I have a title and an income of two hundred thousand a year . But that her mistress , who hates water like a rabid cat -- for it would be hard to give the palm to either in that matter -- that her mistress should have brought her here in a boat ! Is not that very strange and wonderful ? Those two women came into Savoy to sleep like marmots ; they ask if day has dawned at noon ; and to think that they could get up this morning before eight o'clock , to take their chances in running after me ! '' Very soon the old maid and her elderly innocence became , in his eyes , a fresh manifestation of that artificial , malicious little world . It was a paltry device , a clumsy artifice , a piece of priest 's or woman 's craft . Was the duel a myth , or did they merely want to frighten him ?