"Young woman, you have taxed my patience far beyond the limit," said her father, speaking low in an effort to control his wrath. "Hereafter you shall never go beyond the walls of this palace! You shall be a waiting-maid for your sister! The servants shall be instructed to treat you as a menial—one of their own class! These shameless women are dismissed from my service! As for you"—turning upon the old tutor—"you shall be put away under lock and key until I can devise some punishment severe enough to fit your case!"
That night Kalora slept on a hard and narrow cot in a bare apartment adjoining her sister's gorgeous boudoir—quite a change from the suite overlooking the avenue.
The shirt-waist brigade had been sent into banishment, and poor Popova was sitting on a wooden stool in a dungeon, thinking of the dinners he had eaten at Old Point Comfort and wondering if he had not overplayed himself in the effort to be avenged upon the Governor-General.
XIV
HEROISM REWARDED
A month later Popova was still in prison, and had demonstrated that even after one has lunched for several months at the Shoreham, the New Willard and the Raleigh, he may subsist on such simple fare as bread and water.
Kalora had been humiliated to the uttermost, but her spirit was unbroken and defiant.
She was nominally a servant, but Jeneka and the others dared not attempt any overbearing attitude toward her, for they feared her sharp and ready wit.