"Oh they don't give me that!" Scott returned.
"So that it only means then, after all, that I, at the best, must keep you up?"
He fixed on her the nice eyes Lady Wantridge admired. "Do you mean to tell me that already—at this very moment—I'm not distinctly keeping you?"
She gave him back his look. "Wait till she has asked you, and then," Mamie added, "decline."
Scott, not too grossly, wondered. "As acting for you?"
Mamie's next injunction was answer enough. "But before—yes—call."
He took it in. "Call—but decline. Good!"
"The rest," she said, "I leave to you." And she left it in fact with such confidence that for a couple of days she was not only conscious of no need to give Mrs. Medwin another turn of the screw, but positively evaded, in her fortitude, the reappearance of that lady. It was not till the fourth day that she waited upon her, finding her, as she had expected, tense.
"Lady Wantridge will—?"
"Yes, though she says she won't."