The House of Spies by Warwick Deeping

Jerome had gone, and De Rothan walked up and down the brick-paved path between the porch and the gate, with the two yew-trees cut in the shape of peacocks spreading their tails on either side. There were climbing roses flowering over the rust-red front of the house. The stone pillar of the sun-dial had an edging of rank, green grass.

De Rothan stood by the sun-dial and stared at it reflectively. What a thing was Time, how trivial and yet how urgent with its little droppings of sand or the slow stealing of a shadow! And time, delay, was everything to De Rothan for the moment. It was as though a marvellous clock had been constructed; that he had set it going and was waiting to hear it chime all manner of tunes at the hour of noon, when chance, in the shape of a Sussex squire, threatened to send a pistol bullet into the works, and to ruin the whole mechanism.