In the meantime, in the silent house the moments for the one anxious watcher went slowly by. Her novel was not interesting--she let it fall on her knees, and looking at the little clock on the mantelpiece, counted the moments until eleven should strike. She quite expected that Jasper would be home at eleven. It did not enter for a moment into her calculations that he could be absent on this first night of her return beyond that hour. When the eleven musical strokes sounded on the little clock, and were echoed in many deeper booms from without, she got up, and opening the drawing-room door, stepped out into the little hall.