The great lodge-gates were open, but Ping was without in the road, while Jonah was leaning languidly against the wall. As we slowed up, he took his pipe from his mouth. "I shouldn't drive in," he said. "They're out. Won't be back before six, the servants say." * * * * * Black as was the evidence against him, my brother-in-law stoutly refused to be held responsible for the affair. All the way to the Hotel du Palais he declared violently that the engagement had been well and truly made, and that if Evelyn and her husband chose to forget all about it, that was no fault of his. Finally, when Jonah suggested that after luncheon we should return to the villa and inquire whether we had indeed been expected the day before, he assented with disconcerting alacrity. As we passed into the restaurant-- "And I'll do the interrogating," he concluded. "I don't want any of your leading questions. 'I quite expect we were expected yesterday, weren't we?' All sweet and slimy, with a five-franc note in the middle distance." "How dare you?" said Daphne. "Besides, I'd be only too relieved to find it was their mistake." "Blow your relief," replied her husband. "What about my bleeding heart?" "I'm not much of a physician," said I, "but there's some cold stuffed venison on the sideboard. I don't know whether that, judiciously administered...." Berry shook his head. "I doubt it," he said mournfully. "I doubt it very much.... Still"--he looked round hungrily--"we can always try." We were at the villa again within the hour. Almost immediately we elicited the information that Major and Mrs. Swetecote had spent the previous day at San Sebastian. Turning a withering and glassy eye in our direction, my brother-in-law explained the position and desired permission to enter and write a note. This was granted forthwith. My sister and I followed him into a pleasant salon meekly enough. When he had written his letter, he read it to us with the air of a cardinal. _DEAR EVELYN,_ "LEST WE FORGET." _Yes, I know. But you should be more careful. Old friends like us, too. Disgraceful, I call it. To have been unprepared to receive us would have been bad enough, but to be actually absent from home.... Well, as Wordsworth says, that's bent it._ _When I tell you that, in the belief that she was to enjoy a free lunch, my beloved yoke-fellow, who is just now very hot upon economy, forewent her breakfast and arrived upon your threshold faint and ravening, you will conceive the emotion with which she hailed the realization that that same hunger which she had encouraged could only be appeased at an expensive hotel._ _But that is nothing._