e her no more trouble.

He didn't. He looked at Lydia, and all his heavy politeness dropped from
him. His eyes twinkled, and he said, "Come, my dear young lady, let us
save time by your telling me who you are and what you do and why you are
here."

This amused Lydia.

"I think," she said, "that that is the best conversational opening I
ever heard. Well, I suppose I ought to say that I am here to listen to
you."

"Yes, yes--perhaps," answered Albee, with a somewhat political wave of
his hand, "in the same sense in which I came here to meet you--because
fate, luck, divine interposition arranged it so. But why, according to
your own limited views, are you here?"

"Oh, in response to a noble impulse. Don't you ever have them?"

"I did--I did when I was your age," said the governor, and he leaned
back and studied her with open admiration, which somehow in a man of his
reputation was not offensive.

"Why are you here yourself?" said Lydia, giving him a gentle look to
convey that she was very grateful to him for thinking her so handsome.

"Why, I just told you," answered the governor, "because Fate said to
herself: 'Now here's poor old Stephen Albee's been having a dull hard
time of it. Let's have something pleasant happen to him. Let's have him
meet Miss Thorne.'"

A lady on Lydia's other side, who gave her life to the reform of
criminals and particularly hated those who remained outside of penal
institutions, was horrified by what she considered the flirtatious tone
of the conversation. She could hear--in fact she listened--that several
meetings had been arranged before the governor's time came to speak.

Everything worked out exactly as Mrs. Galton had intended. The
governor--who had expected to say that he was heart and soul with this
great cause, to rehearse a few historic examples of prison
mismanagement, to confide to his audience that a man of national
reputation was at that moment waiting to see him about something of
international importance, and then to get away in time to play a few
holes of golf before dark--rose to his feet, fired with the
determination to make a good speech, good enough to impress Lydia; and
he did. He had a simple direct manner of speaking, so that no one
noticed that his sentences themselves were rather oratorical and
emotional. Most speakers, too many at least, have just the opposite
technic--an oratorical manner and no matter behind it. He gave the
impression, without actually s