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