Directly after the meagre meal which in New York boarding houses is dignified by the name of luncheon, Shirley proceeded to get ready for this portentous visit to the Ryder mansion.  She was anxious to make a favourable impression on 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 towards the Ryder mansion, which she knew well by sight.