"The principal impression this book has made upon me is that Mrs. Gaskell must have been a very lovable woman."
[Footnote: George Eliot thought so too, years before Evadne was born, and expressed the thought in a letter in which she also prophesied that "Ruth" would not live through a generation. The impression the book made upon Evadne is another proof of prescience in the great writer.]
"The story seems to me long drawn out, and of small significance. It is full of food for the heart, but the head goes empty away, and both should be satisfied by a work of fiction, I think. But perhaps it is my own mood that is at fault. At another time I might have found gems in it which now in my dulness I have failed to perceive."
Somebody knocked at the door as she blotted the words.
"Come in, auntie," she said, as if in answer to an accustomed signal; and Mrs. Orton Beg entered in a long, loose, voluminously draped white wrapper.
Evadne drew an easy-chair to the fire for her.
"Sit down, auntie," she said, "and be cosey. You are late to-night. I was afraid you were not coming."
Mrs. Orton Beg was in the habit of coming to Evadne's room every evening when she was at Fraylingay, to chat, or sit silently sociable over the fire with her before saying goodnight.
"Do I ever fail you?" she asked, smiling.
"No. But I have been afraid of the fatal fascination of that great fat foreign prince. He singled you out for special attention, and I have been jealous."