There was a knock at the door, and the maid came in, bearing a card.
“Good gracious me!” cried Katherine, jumping to her feet. “The Prince has come. What a stupid thing that we have no mirror in this room, and it’s a sewing and sitting room, too. Do I look all right, Dorothy?”
“To me you seem perfection.”
“Ah, well, I can glance at a glass on the next floor. Won’t you come down and see him trampled on?”
“No, thank you. I shall most likely drop off to sleep, and enjoy forty winks in this very comfortable chair. Don’t be too harsh with the young man, Kate. You are quite wrong in your surmises about him. The Lieutenant never made any such arrangement as you suggest, because he talked of nothing but the most commonplace subjects all the time I was with him, as I was just about to tell you, only you seem in such a hurry to get away.”
“Oh, that doesn’t deceive me in the least. I’ll be back shortly, with the young man’s scalp dangling at my belt. Now we shan’t be long,” and with that Katherine went skipping downstairs.
Dorothy picked up a magazine that lay on the table, and for a few moments turned its leaves from one story to another, trying to interest herself, but failing. Then she lifted the newspaper that lay at her feet, but it also was soon cast aside, and she leaned back in her chair with half-closed eyes, looking out at the cruiser in the Bay. A slight haze arose between her and the ship, thickening and thickening until at last it obscured the vessel.
Dorothy was oppressed by a sense of something forgotten, and she strove in vain to remember what it was. It was of the utmost importance, she was certain, and this knowledge made her mental anxiety the greater.
At last out of the gloom she saw Sabina approach, clothed in rags, and then a flash of intuition enabled her to grasp the difficulty. Through her remissness the ball dress was unfinished, and the girl, springing to her feet, turned intuitively to the sewing-machine, when the ringing laugh of Katherine dissolved the fog.
“Why, you poor girl, what’s the matter with you? Are you sitting down to drudgery again? You’ve forgotten the fortune!”