It had never occurred to her that a
gentleman who had won scientific celebrity by digging
about Arabic roots, and who had contributed a daughter
like Janet to the popular magazines, could claim anything
of her beyond a highly respectful consideration. In
moments when she hoped to know the Cardiffs well she had
pictured herself doing little graceful acts of politeness
toward this paternal person--acts connected with his
spectacles, his _Athenian_, his foot-stool But apparently
she had to meet a knight and not a pawn.
She was hardly aware of taking counsel with herself; and
the way she abandoned her hesitations, and what Janet
was inwardly calling her Burne-Jonesisms, had all the
effect of an access of unconsciousness. Janet Cardiff
watched it with delight. "But why," she asked herself in
wonder, "should she have been so affected--if it was
affectation--with _me?_" She would decide whether it was
or was not afterward, she thought. Meanwhile she was glad
her father had thought of saying something nice about the
art criticism in the _Decade_; he was putting it so much
better than she could, and it would do for both of them.
"You paint yourself, I fancy?" Mr. Cardiff was saying
lightly.
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