"Oh, do go!" cried Miss Bennett. She meant to be helpful, and added the first thing that came into her head. "You would make a wonderful Roman senator. I'll arrange your costume for you."
In a flash Lydia saw him before her, bare legged, bare armed, bare throated. She recoiled, though of course it was not his fault. If Benny had said a doge or a cardinal; but glancing at her friend she saw he was not suited to either rôle. He was not fine and thin and subtle. He was the type of a Roman senator.
"It would be a great temptation to go—to see Miss Thorne as an Indian," he answered, smiling his admiration at her.
"I don't think I shall go," said Lydia, waving her head slightly. "I don't think it's dignified—dressing up like monkeys."
Miss Bennett looked up surprised. Lydia had been so interested in the whole subject a few minutes before. She thought the girl was growing uncommonly capricious. Albee caught the note at once.
"If they would let me go as a spectator——" he began.
"That spoils it, you know," Miss Bennett answered, but Lydia interrupted:
"Of course, they'd be glad to get the governor on any terms."
But the question was more simply settled. Albee was summoned to Washington to testify before a committee of the Senate which under the guise of helping him was actually trying to steal the political thunder of his investigation and Lydia, with her Indian costume just completed—and Benny's, too, from a Longhi picture—abandoned the whole thing and went off to Washington to hear the great man testify carrying the reluctant Miss Bennett with her.
Bobby Dorset, who had said immediately just what Lydia had longed to hear Albee say—that parties like that were more trouble than they were worth—had been coerced by Lydia into going. She had made him get a Greek warrior's costume, in which he was very splendid. He was left with his costume and his party, and no Lydia to make it pleasant.