“She has no business to be absent without leave,” said Sabina.

“How you talk!  As if she were a sailor on a battleship—­ I mean a cruiser.”

“Where can the girl have gone?” wailed the mother, almost wringing her hands, partially overcome by the crisis.  “Did she say anything about going out to you, Katherine?  She sometimes makes a confidant of you, doesn’t she?”

“Confidant!” exclaimed Sabina wrathfully.

“I know where she has gone,” said Katherine with an innocent sigh.

“Then why didn’t you tell us before?” exclaimed mother and daughter in almost identical terms.

“She has eloped with the captain of the ‘Consternation,’” explained Katherine calmly, little guessing that her words contained a color of truth.  “Papa sat next him at the dinner last night, and says he is a jolly old salt and a bachelor.  Papa was tremendously taken with him, and they discussed tactics together.  Indeed, papa has quite a distinct English accent this morning, and I suspect a little bit of a headache which he tries to conceal with a wavering smile.”

“You can’t conceal a headache, because it’s invisible,” said the mother seriously.  “I wish you wouldn’t talk so carelessly, Katherine, and you mustn’t speak like that of your father.”

“Oh, papa and I understand one another,” affirmed Katherine with great confidence, and now for the first time during this conversation the young girl turned her face away from the window, for the door had opened to let in the culprit.

“Now, Amhurst, what is the meaning of this?” cried Sabina before her foot was fairly across the threshold.

All three women looked at the newcomer.  Her beautiful face was aglow, probably through the exertion of coming up the stairs, and her eyes shone like those of the Goddess of Freedom as she returned steadfastly the supercilious stare with which the tall Sabina regarded her.

“I was detained,” she said quietly.

“Why did you go away without permission?”

“Because I had business to do which could not be transacted in this room.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.  Why did you not ask permission?”

The girl slowly raised her two hands, and showed her shapely wrists close together, and a bit of the forearm not covered by the sleeve of her black dress.

“Because,” she said slowly, “the shackles have fallen from these wrists.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Sabina, apparently impressed in spite of herself, but the younger daughter clapped her hands rapturously.

“Splendid, splendid, Dorothy,” she cried.  “I don’t know what you mean either, but you look like Maxine Elliott in that play where she—­”

“Will you keep quiet!” interrupted the elder sister over her shoulder.

“I mean that I intend to sew here no longer,” proclaimed Dorothy.

“Oh, Miss Amhurst, Miss Amhurst,” bemoaned the matron.  “You will heartlessly leave us in this crisis when we are helpless; when there is not a sewing woman to be had in the place for love or money.  Every one is working night and day to be ready for the ball on the fourteenth, and you—­ you whom we have nurtured—­”