Mrs. Galton, who had been through all this hundreds of times and knew he had never intended to arrive a minute earlier than he did, smiled warmly, and said how fortunate they counted themselves in having obtained an hour of the time of a man whom all the world---- On the contrary, the governor esteemed it a privilege to speak on behalf of a cause which commanded the sympathy---- It was a turning point, indeed, in the history of any cause, when a man like the governor---- They would have gone on like this through luncheon, but at this moment a sudden rustling at his side made the governor turn, and there--later a good deal than he had contrived to be--was Lydia, Lydia in a tight plain dress and a small plumed hat that made her look like a crested serpent. Mrs. Galton introduced them, and with a sigh of relief settled back to eating her lunch and running over her own introductory remarks in the comfortable certainty that the governor would give 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.