about nine o'clock
Had not this night opened a vista which nothing hereafter might shut out ? And the truth might be as Richard Gessner had promised -- a truth of permanence , of the continued possession of this wonderland . Who shall blame him if his heart leaped at the mere contemplation of this possibility ? It would have been about nine o'clock when they carried his coffee to the garden -- it was just half-past nine when Anna Gessner returned unexpectedly to the house . Alban heard the bell in the courtyard ring loudly , and upon that the throttled purr of a motor 's heavy engine . He had expected Silas Geary , but such a man , he rightly argued , would not come with so much pomp and circumstance , and he stood at once , anxious and not a little abashed . Perhaps some suspicion of the truth had flashed upon him unwittingly .