Life has surely hardships enough that are inevitable without gratuitously adding the hardship of absolute government, administered by a clock?
It was a quarter past twelve when Lady Lundie rose blandly from the whist-table, and said that she supposed somebody must set the example of going to bed.

Sir Patrick and Smith, the surgeon and Jones, agreed on a last rubber.

Blanche vanished while her stepmother's eye was on her; and appeared again in the drawing-room, when Lady Lundie was safe in the hands of her maid.

Nobody followed the example of the mistress of the house but Arnold.

He left the billiard-room with the certainty that it was all over now between Geoffrey and himself.