Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/57

 though the expression was not complimentary. But if not, she was monstrously unjust. He did not deny that the accusation might be well founded; for he was modest as well as sensitive, and did not think very highly of himself at present, though he hoped great things for the future, and believed that he was to be a famous artist.

The more he told himself that he had no right to expect anything of Fanny, the more thoroughly convinced he became that his right existed, and that she was trampling upon it. She had ordered him into the library in a very peremptory and high-and-mighty fashion to wait for her, regardless of the fact that he had travelled twenty-four hours, and had acquired the prerogative right of the traveller to soap and water before all else. No doubt he was quite presentable, since the conditions of modern railways had made it possible to come in clean, or comparatively so, from a longish run. But the ancient traditions ought not to be swept out of the way, Louis thought, and the right of scrubbing subsisted still. She might at least have