In all her cogitation on the possibility of her marriage with the governor she had somehow never thought of his expecting her to love him--to be in love with him. She walked on a few steps, and then said, "I don't think I shall ever be in love--I never have. I feel for you a more serious respect and admiration than I have ever felt for anyone, man or woman." "And what do you feel for this little blond whippersnapper who is always under your feet?" "For Bobby?" Her surprise was genuine that his name should be dragged into a serious discussion. "I feel affection for Bobby. He is very useful and kind. I could never love him. Oh, mercy no!" "Do you mean to say," said Albee, "you have never felt--you have never had a man take you in his arms, and say to yourself as he did, 'This is living'?" "No, no, no, no! Never, never!" said Lydia. She lied passionately, so passionately that she never stopped to remember that she was lying. "I don't want to feel like that. You don't understand me, governor. To feel what I feel for you is more, much more than----" She stopped without finishing her sentence. "You make me very proud, very happy when you talk like that," said Albee. "I certainly never expected that the happiest time of my life--these last few weeks--would come to me after I was fifty. I wonder," he added, turning and looking her over with a sort of paternal amusement which she had grown to like--"I wonder if there were really girls like you in my own time, if I had had sense enough to find them." Lydia, who was under the impression that her whole future was being settled there and then in Potomac Park, within sight of the White House, on which she kept a metaphysical eye, felt that this was the ideal way for a man and woman to discuss their marriage--not coldly, but without surging waves of emotion to blind their eyes. Marriage had not been actually mentioned. Nothing definite had been said by either of them when before five they came in to join Benny at tea. But Lydia had no doubt of the significance of their talk. Like most clear-sighted heiresses, she know, rationally, that her fortune was a part of her charms; but like most human beings, she found it easy to believe that she was loved for herself. They were to go back to New York on the midnight train so that the governor might be in time for his morning's work in the investigation, but before going he was having a small dinner party. An extra man for Benny, a distinguished member of the House, and the senator from his own state--an old political ally--and his wife. His wife had been a Washington woman of an old family, and now with her husband's money and position her house was a place of some political importance.