“Hum,” grunted Ryder, Sr.  “I rather thought I should find you here, but I didn’t quite expect to find you on your knees—­ dragging our pride in the mud.”

“That’s where our pride ought to be,” retorted Jefferson savagely.  He felt in the humor to say anything, no matter what the consequences.

“So she has refused you again, eh?” said Ryder, Sr. with a grin.

“Yes,” rejoined Jefferson with growing irritation, “she objects to my family.  I don’t blame her.”

The financier smiled grimly as he answered: 

“Your family in general—­me in particular, eh?  I gleaned that much when I came in.”  He looked towards the door of the room in which Shirley had taken refuge and as if talking to himself he added:  “A curious girl with an inverted point of view—­sees everything different to others—­I want to see her before she goes.”

He walked over to the door and raised his hand as if he were about to knock.  Then he stopped as if he had changed his mind and turning towards his son he demanded: 

“Do you mean to say that she has done with you?”

“Yes,” answered Jefferson bitterly.

“Finally?”

“Yes, finally—­forever!”

“Does she mean it?” asked Ryder, Sr., sceptically.

“Yes—­she will not listen to me while her father is still in peril.”

There was an expression of half amusement, half admiration on the financier’s face as he again turned towards the door.

“It’s like her, damn it, just like her!” he muttered.

He knocked boldly at the door.

“Who’s there?” cried Shirley from within.

“It is I—­Mr. Ryder.  I wish to speak to you.”

“I must beg you to excuse me,” came the answer, “I cannot see you.”

Jefferson interfered.

“Why do you want to add to the girl’s misery?  Don’t you think she has suffered enough?”

“Do you know what she has done?” said Ryder with pretended indignation.  “She has insulted me grossly.  I never was so humiliated in my life.  She has returned the cheque I sent her last night in payment for her work on my biography.  I mean to make her take that money.  It’s hers, she needs it, her father’s a beggar.  She must take it back.  It’s only flaunting her contempt for me in my face and I won’t permit it.”

“I don’t think her object in refusing that money was to flaunt contempt in your face, or in any way humiliate you,” answered Jefferson.  “She feels she has been sailing under false colours and desires to make some reparation.”

“And so she sends me back my money, feeling that will pacify me, perhaps repair the injury she has done me, perhaps buy me into entering into her plan of helping her father, but it won’t.  It only increases my determination to see her and her—­” Suddenly changing the topic he asked:  “When do you leave us?”

“Now—­at once—­that is—­I—­don’t know,” answered Jefferson embarrassed.  “The fact is my faculties are numbed—­I seem to have lost my power of thinking.  Father,” he exclaimed, “you see what a wreck you have made of our lives!”