"Decline to live with him," Evadne answered.

This was what Mrs. Orton Beg had begun to suspect, but there is often an
element of surprise in the confirmation of our shrewdest suspicions, and
now she sat upright, leant forward, and looked at her niece aghast.
"_What_?" she demanded.

"I shall decline to live with him," Evadne repeated with emphasis.

Mrs. Orton Beg slowly resumed her reclining position, acting as one does
who has heard the worst, and realizes that there is nothing to be done but
to recover from the shock.

"I thought you loved him," she ventured, after a prolonged pause.

"Yes, so did I," Evadne answered, frowning--"but I was mistaken. It was a
mere affair of the senses, to be put off by the first circumstance
calculated to cause a revulsion of feeling by lowering him in my
estimation--a thing so slight that, after reading the letter, as we drove
to the station--even so soon! I could see him as he is. I noticed at once--
but it was for the first time--I noticed that, although his face is
handsome, the expression of it is not noble at all." She shuddered as at
the sight of something repulsive. "You see," she explained, "my taste is
cultivated to so fine an extent, I require something extremely
well-flavoured for the dish which is to be the _piece de resistance_
of my life-feast. My appetite is delicate, it requires to be tempted, and
a husband of that kind, a moral leper"--she broke off with a gesture,
spreading her hands, palms outward, as if she would fain put some horrid
idea far from her. "Besides, marrying a man like that, allowing him an
assured position in society, is countenancing vice, and"--she glanced