"To meet Marion Delegass?"
"Of course. I thought it would liven Mrs. Strathmore up a little. She always reminded me of water-gruel with not enough salt in it."
Dr. Wilson burst into a roar of laughter, leaning back in his chair and slapping his knee.
"Marion Delegass! Why she's left more husbands and lovers behind her than a sailor has wives! Marion Delegass and that prig in petticoats! Well, Elsie, you do beat the devil!"
"Am I to understand that you know His Satanic Majesty well enough to speak with authority?" she laughed. "What do you think now of my revenge?"
"I don't exactly see where the revenge comes in. She won't come to the lunch."
"Come? Oh, no; thank Heaven, she won't come. She'd be like a death's head in a punch-bowl. She won't come, but she'll tell that she was invited. She'll be too furious not to tell; and everybody will know that I asked her. That's all I care about."
Wilson laughed again.
"Well," he said again, "you are the cheekiest and the most amusing woman in town. You'll shock all your relations, but they must be getting hardened to that by this time."
Whether the relatives were on this occasion more or less shocked than upon others was not a question to which Elsie devoted any especial thought. She gave her luncheon, and all the world knew that she had invited Mrs. Strathmore to meet Marion Delegass on the day of the consecration. Mrs. Strathmore was so enraged that she talked flames and fury, even going so far as to wonder whether there were not some possibility of excommunication; so that her tormentor was enchanted with the success of her revenge.