"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.