The President (Illustrated)

On this far-away November morning, it being ten by every steeple
clock and an hour utterly chaste, there could have existed no
impropriety in one’s having had a look into the rooms of Mr.
Richard Storms, said rooms being second-floor front of the
superfashionable house of Mr. Lorimer Gwynn, Washington, North
West. Richard, wrapped to the chin in a bathrobe, was sitting much
at his ease, having just tumbled from the tub. There was ever a recess
in Richard’s morning programme at this point during which his
breakfast arrived. Pending that repast, he had thrown himself into an
easy-chair before the blaze which crackled in the deep fireplace. The
sudden sharp weather made the fire pleasant enough.
The apartment in which Richard lounged, and the rooms to the rear
belonging with it, were richly appointed. A fortune had been spilled
to produce those effects in velvets and plushes and pictures and
bronzes and crystals and chinas and lamps and Russia leathers and
laces and brocades and silks, and as you walked the thick rugs you
made no more noise than a ghost. It was Richard’s caprice to have
his environment the very lap of splendor, being as given to luxury as
a woman...