The words rankled. He was asking himself just then whether he was a "spoilt baby" or not. It was of great importance to him to know the truth. If he was a spoilt baby, of course Miss Trehearne had a right to say so if she liked, 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 given him a hint as to the whereabouts of his room, since she had left him to himself for a quarter of an hour. She had not been gone four minutes yet, but Louis made it fifteen, and fifteen it was to be, in his estimation. Presently he heard a man's footstep in the library behind him, and the subdued tinkling of a superior tea-service, of which the sound differs from the clatter of the hotel tea-tray, as the voice, say, of Fanny Trehearne differed in refinement from that of an Irish cook. But it irritated Lawrence, nevertheless, and he did not look round. He felt that when Fanny came down again, he intended to refuse tea altogether--presumably, by way of proving that he was not a spoilt baby after all. He crossed one leg over the other impatiently, and hesitated as to whether, if he lit a cigarette, it would seem rude to be smoking when Fanny should come, even though he was really in the open air on the verandah. But in this, his manners had the better of his impatience, and after touching his cigarette case in his pocket, in a longing way, he did not take it out.