"Society has never bothered much with logic," she sighed. "Living here at all is scandalous, and shocking, but it looks as though I am simply flouting convention. Unforgivable, terrible, but not nearly so bad as ..."

She searched for words. "Were I living here, alone, with an unmarried man, the implication would not be that I was daring or shocking. It would be that I were ... that we had ... an arrangement."

She could not say the word mistress.