A few days afterward Miss Thorne moved back to New York to the house in the East Seventies. Miss Bennett, who hated the country, partly because there she was more under Lydia's thumb, rejoiced at being back in New York. She had many friends--was much more personally popular than her charge--and in town she could see them more easily. Every morning after she had finished her housekeeping she went out and walked round the reservoir. She liked to walk, planting her little feet as precisely as if she were dancing or skating. Then there was usually some necessary shopping for Lydia or the house or herself; then luncheon, and afterward for an hour or two her own work. She was a member of endless committees, entertainments for charitable purposes, hospital boards, reform associations. Then before five she was at home, behind the tea table, waiting on Lydia, engaged in getting rid of people whom Lydia didn't want to see and keeping those whom Lydia would want to see but had forgotten. And then dinner--at home if Lydia was giving a party; but most often both women dined out. The winter was notable for Lydia's sudden friendship or flirtation, or affair as it was variously described, with Stephen Albee, the ex-governor of a great state. It would have seemed more natural if he had been one of Eleanor's discoveries, but he was not--he was Lydia's own find. Eleanor, with all her airs of a young old maid, had never been known to distinguish any man lacking in the physical attractions of youth. Albee, though he had been a fine-looking man once and still had a certain magnificent leonine appearance, was over fifty and showed his years. He had come to New York to conduct an important Federal investigation, and the masterly manner in which he was doing it led to presidential prophecies. Lydia's friends were beginning to murmur that it would be just like Lydia to end in the White House. Besides, the governor was rich, the owner of silver mines and a widower. It was noticed that Lydia was more respectful to him than she had ever been to anyone, followed his lead intellectually, and quoted him to the verge of being comic. "It is painful to me," Eleanor said, "to watch the process of Lydia's discovering politics. Last Monday the existence of the Federal constitution dawned upon her, and next week states' rights may emerge." It was equally painful to the governor's old friends to watch the even less graceful process of his discovery of social life. The two friends adventured mutually. If Lydia sat all day listening to his investigation, he appeared hardly less regularly in her opera box.