"Why," I asked, "are you looking like a tube map?"
"Mrs. Messington-Smith," she answered with a slight catch in her voice, "has just been telephoning."
"I thought the receiver looked a bit played out," I said. "What does she want with us now?"
"Well, she has got a sore throat after all. You could tell that from her voice. And she isn't going to The Purple Lie either. She never even meant to."
"But the tickets," I gasped.
"She and her husband quite forgot about them till to-day," said Arabella. "And now they have given them away to some friends. But they weren't given away at all till this afternoon, and——"
She broke off and gave a lachrymose little sniff.
"And what?"
"And she knew, of course, that we're disengaged to-night, and when she got my letter she was just going to send them round to us."