The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (12.1897)

Flower o5 the Clove

By Henry Harland

I

IN the first-floor sitting-room of a lodging-house in Great
College Street, Westminster, a young man—he was tall and
thin, with a good deal of rather longish light-coloured hair, some-
what tumbled about; and he wore a pince-nez, and was in slippers
and the oldest of tattered coats—a man of thirty-something was
seated at a writing-table, diligently scribbling at what an accus-
tomed eye might have recognised as “ copy,” and negligently
allowing the smoke from a cigarette to curl round and stain the
thumb and forefinger of his idle hand, when the lodging-house
maid-servant opened his door, and announced excitedly, “A lady
to see you, sir.”

With the air of one taken altogether by surprise, and at a cruel
disadvantage, the writer dropped his pen, and jumped up. He
was in slippers and a disgraceful coat, not to dwell upon the con-
dition of his hair. “You ought to have kept her downstairs

until-” he began, frowning upon the maid ; and at that point

his visitor entered the room.

She was a handsome, dashing-looking young woman, in a toilette
that breathed the very last and crispest savour of Parisian elegance :

a hat