"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.