"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." "She says she won't? O-oh!" Mrs. Medwin moaned. "Sit tight all the same. I HAVE her!" "But how?" "Through Scott--whom she wants." "Your bad brother!" Mrs. Medwin stared. "What does she want of him?" "To amuse them at Catchmore. Anything for that. And he WOULD. But he shan't!" Mamie declared. "He shan't go unless she comes. She must meet you first--you're my condition." "O-o-oh!" Mrs. Medwin's tone was a wonder of hope and fear. "But doesn't he want to go?" "He wants what I want. She draws the line at YOU. I draw the line at HIM." "But SHE--doesn't she mind that he's bad?" It was so artless that Mamie laughed. "No--it doesn't touch her. Besides, perhaps he isn't. It isn't as for you--people seem not to know. He has settled everything, at all events, by going to see her. It's before her that he's the thing she'll have to have." "Have to?" "For Sundays in the country. A feature--THE feature." "So she has asked him?" "Yes--and he has declined." "For ME?" Mrs. Medwin panted. "For me," said Mamie on the door-step. "But I don't leave him for long." Her hansom had waited. "She'll come."