twelve o’clock
who ? ' ` Paul Evelyn ; I met him as I passed Brookes ' , and he told me that Lord Grey had resigned , and the King had accepted his resignation . ' But Mr. Rigby , who , though very fond of news , and much interested in the present , was extremely jealous of any one giving him information , was sceptical . He declared that Paul Evelyn was always wrong ; that it was morally impossible that Paul Evelyn ever could be right ; that he knew , from the highest authority , that Lord Grey had been twice yesterday with the King ; that on the last visit nothing was settled ; that if he had been at the palace again to-day , he could not have been there before twelve o'clock ; that it was only now a quarter to one ; that Lord Grey would have called his colleagues together on his return ; that at least an hour must have elapsed before anything could possibly have transpired . Then he compared and criticised the dates of every rumoured incident of the last twenty-four hours , and nobody was stronger in dates than Mr. Rigby ; counted even the number of stairs which the minister had to ascend and descend in his visit to the palace , and the time their mountings and dismountings must have consumed , detail was Mr. Rigby 's forte ; and finally , what with his dates , his private information , his knowledge of palace localities , his contempt for Paul Evelyn , and his confidence in himself , he succeeded in persuading his downcast and disheartened friends that their comfortable intelligence had not the slightest foundation . They all left the room together ; they were in the hall ; the gentlemen who brought the news looked somewhat depressed , but Mr. Rigby gay , even amid the prostration of his party , from the consciousness that he had most critically demolished a piece of political gossip and conveyed a certain degree of mortification to a couple of his companions ; when a travelling carriage and four with a ducal coronet drove up to the house . The door was thrown open , the steps dashed down , and a youthful noble sprang from his chariot into the hall .