CHAPTER XVI.
When Shirley reached her rooms she broke down completely, she threw herself upon a sofa and burst into a fit of violent sobbing.
After all, she was only a woman and the ordeal through which she had passed would have taxed the strongest powers of endurance.

She had borne up courageously while there remained the faintest chance that she might succeed in moving the financier to pity, but now that all hopes in that direction were shattered and she herself had been ordered harshly from the house like any ordinary malefactor, the reaction set in, and she gave way freely to her long pent-up anguish and distress.

Nothing now could save her father--not even this journey to Washington which she determined to take nevertheless, for, according to what Stott had said, the Senate was to take a vote that very night.
She looked at the time--eleven o'clock.

She had told Mr.Ryder that she would leave his house at once, but on reflection it was impossible for a girl alone to seek a room at that hour.

It would be midnight before she could get her things packed.