They can but obey the literal word.

Sir John, leaving me in haste this morning, I forgot a question I would have asked, and sent a lacquey to recall him." Anne sat upright.
"Sister--I pray you--another glass of wine." My lady gave it to her at once, and she drained it eagerly.
"Was he overtaken ?" said a curious matron, who wished not to see the subject closed.
"No," quoth her ladyship, with a light laugh--"though he must have been in haste, for the man was sent after him in but a moment's time.

'Twas then I told the fellow to go later to his lodgings and deliver my message into Sir John's own hand, whence it seems that he thinks that he must await him till he comes." Upon a table near there lay the loaded whip; for she had felt it bolder to let it lie there as if forgotten, because her pulse had sprung so at first sight of it when she came down, and she had so quailed before the desire to thrust it away, to hide it from her sight.

"And that I quail before," she had said, "I must have the will to face--or I am lost." So she had let it stay.
A languishing beauty, with melting blue eyes and a pretty fashion of ever keeping before the world of her admirers her waxen delicacy, lifted the heavy thing in her frail white hand.
"How can your ladyship wield it ?" she said.

"It is so heavy for a woman--but your ladyship is--is not--" "Not quite a woman," said the beautiful creature, standing at her full great height, and smiling down at this blue and white piece of frailty with the flashing splendour of her eyes.
"Not quite a woman," cried two wits at once.