"Well, they're a worn-out old lot anyhow; they've used up their resources.They do look out and I'll do them the justice to say they're not afraid--not even of me!" he continued as his sister again showed something of the same irony."Lady Wantridge at any rate wasn't; that's what I mean by her having made love to me.She does what she likes.Mind it, you know." He was by this time fairly teaching her to read one of her best friends, and when, after it, he had come back to the great point of his lesson--that of her failure, through feminine inferiority, practically to grasp the truth that their being just as they were, he and she, was the real card for them to play--when he had renewed that reminder he left her absolutely in a state of dependence.Her impulse to press him on the subject of Lady Wantridge dropped; it was as if she had felt that, whatever had taken place, something would somehow come of it.She was to be in a manner disappointed, but the impression helped to keep her over to the next morning, when, as Scott had foretold, his new acquaintance did reappear, explaining to Miss Cutter that she had acted the day before to gain time and that she even now sought to gain it by not waiting longer.What, she promptly intimated she had asked herself, could that friend be thinking of? She must show where she stood before things had gone too far.If she had brought her answer without more delay she wished make it sharp.Mrs.Medwin? Never! "No, my dear--not I.
THERE I stop."
Mamie had known it would be "collar-work," but somehow now, at the beginning she felt her heart sink.It was not that she had expected to carry the position with a rush, but that, as always after an interval, her visitor's defences really loomed--and quite, as it were, to the material vision--too large.She was always planted with them, voluminous, in the very centre of the passage;was like a person accommodated with a chair in some unlawful place at the theatre.She wouldn't move and you couldn't get round.
Mamie's calculation indeed had not been on getting round; she was obliged to recognise that, too foolishly and fondly, she had dreamed of inducing a surrender.Her dream had been the fruit of her need; but, conscious that she was even yet unequipped for pressure, she felt, almost for the first time in her life, superficial and crude.She was to be paid--but with what was she, to that end, to pay? She had engaged to find an answer to this question, but the answer had not, according to her promise, "come."And Lady Wantridge meanwhile massed herself, and there was no view of her that didn't show her as verily, by some process too obscure to be traced, the hard depository of the social law.She was no younger, no fresher, no stronger, really, than any of them; she was only, with a kind of haggard fineness, a sharpened taste for life, and, with all sorts of things behind and beneath her, more abysmal and more immoral, more secure and more impertinent.The points she made were two in number.One was that she absolutely declined; the other was that she quite doubted if Mamie herself had measured the job.The thing couldn't be done.But say it COULD be; was Mamie quite the person to do it? To this Miss Cutter, with a sweet smile, replied that she quite understood how little she might seem so."I'm only one of the persons to whom it has appeared that YOUare."
"Then who are the others?"
"Well, to begin with, Lady Edward, Lady Bellhouse and Mrs.
Pouncer."
"Do you mean that they'll come to meet her?""I've seen them, and they've promised."
"To come, of course," Lady Wantridge said, "if _I_ come."Her hostess cast about."Oh of course you could prevent them.But I should take it as awfully kind of you not to.WON'T you do this for me?" Mamie pleaded.
Her friend looked over the room very much as Scott had done."Do they really understand what it's FOR?""Perfectly.So that she may call."
"And what good will that do her?"
Miss Cutter faltered, but she presently brought it out."Naturally what one hopes is that, you'll ask her.""Ask her to call?"