the financier, so she
took some pains with her personal appearance. She always looked
stylish, no matter what she wore, and her poverty was of too
recent date to make much difference to her wardrobe, which was
still well supplied with Paris-made gowns. She selected a simple
close-fitting gown of gray chiffon cloth and a picture hat of
Leghorn straw heaped with red roses, Shirley's favourite flower.
Thus arrayed, she sallied forth at two o'clock--a little gray
mouse to do battle with the formidable lion.

The sky was threatening, so instead of walking a short way up
Fifth Avenue for exercise, as she had intended doing, she cut
across town through Ninth Street, and took the surface car on
Fourth Avenue. This would put her down at Madison Avenue and
Seventy-fourth Street, which was only a block from the Ryder
residence. She looked so pretty and was so well dressed that the
passers-by who looked after her wondered why she did not take a
cab instead of standing on a street corner for a car. But one's
outward appearance is not always a faithful index to the condition
of one's pocketbook, and Shirley was rapidly acquiring the art of
economy.

It was not without a certain trepidation that she began this
journey. So far, all her plans had been based largely on theory,
but now that she was actually on her way to Mr. Ryder all sorts of
misgivings beset her. Suppose he knew her by sight and roughly
accused her of obtaining access to his house under false pretences
and then had her ejected by the servants? How terrible and
humiliating that would be! And even if he did not how could she
possibly find those letters with him watching her, and all in the
brief time of a conventional afternoon call? It had been an absurd
idea from the first. Stott was right; she saw that now. But she
had entered upon it and she was not going to confess herself
beaten until she had tried. And as the car sped along Madison
Avenue, gradually drawing nearer to the house which she was going
to enter disguised as it were, like a burglar, she felt cold
chills run up and down her spine--the same sensation that one
experiences when one rings the bell of a dentist's where one has
gone to have a tooth extracted. In fact, she felt so nervous and
frightened that if she had not been ashamed before herself she
would have turned back. In about twenty minutes the car stopped at
the corner of Seventy-fourth Street. Shirley descended and with a
quickened pulse walked