She went home feeling encouraged. Not only had she managed to get him to agree to enlist O'Bannon's help in the matter of Evans' pardon, but she herself had supported the mention of O'Bannon's name with something that was almost calm.
CHAPTER XVII
It was noticeable—though no one noticed it—that a month after Lydia went to work in Mrs. Galton's organization everyone in her immediate circle was doing something for released convicts. Bobby, Miss Bennett, Eleanor, Wiley, all suddenly began to think that the problem of the criminal was the most important, the most vital, the most interesting problem in the world. The explanation was simple: A will like Lydia's, harnessed to a constructive purpose, was far more irresistible than in the old days when it had been selfish, spasmodic and undisciplined.
She was given a little office, like Miss Galton's, and she was in it every morning at nine o'clock. Miss Bennett, who had worried all her life because Lydia led an irregular, aimless, idle existence, now worried even more because her working hours were long.
"Surely," she protested almost every morning, "Mrs. Galton will not care if you don't get there until half past nine or even ten. These cold days it isn't good for you——"
Lydia explained that she was not going to the office early in order to please Mrs. Galton, who, as a matter of fact, did not arrive there until late in the morning. The organization needed money desperately, there was much to be done. But the truth was she loved the routine—the hard impersonal work. It saved her from herself. She was almost happy.
Eleanor had evidently done what she had been asked to do, for O'Bannon seemed to have dropped out of the world. His name was never mentioned, and as week after week went by it seemed to Lydia that she herself was forgetting him. Perhaps a time would come when she could even see him without wrecking her peace of soul. Her only sorrow was the delay in Evans' pardon. It didn't come. Lydia could not enjoy her liberty with Evans in prison. The forms had all been complied with, but the governor did not act. At last Mrs. Galton suggested her going to Albany; or perhaps she knew someone who would have influence with the governor. Yes, Lydia knew someone—Albee.
Albee was now senator from his own state, and a busy session in Washington had kept him there. He had been among the first to telegraph Lydia. She found his message and his flowers in the house when she first came home. The message sounded as if it had come from a friend; but Lydia knew that it had not; that Albee had escaped from her and her influence, or thought he had. She had known it even in the days of her trial, and looking back on the facts and on herself she wondered that she had not resented it. Those were days in which she had awarded punishments readily, and Albee had really behaved badly to her. They had been very nearly engaged and yet the instant she was in trouble he had deserted her. He had gone through all the motions of helping her, but in spirit she knew that Albee the day she killed Drummond had begun to disentangle himself. She felt not the least resentment against him; only she recognized the fact that his remoteness from her made it more difficult to make use of him for Evans, unless—the idea suddenly came to her—it might make it easier. He would avoid seeing her if he could; but if she found her way to him he might be eager to atone, to set himself right by doing her a definite favor.
The evening of the day that she saw this clearly she took a train to Washington. The next morning she was waiting in his outer office before he reached it himself. A new secretary—the old one had been promoted to some position of political prominence at home—did not know her and had not been warned against her by name. So she was sitting there when Albee came in with his old cheerful, dominating, leonine look. Just for the fraction of a second his face fell at seeing her, and then he hurried to her side, as if out of all the world she was the person he most wanted to see.