She did not say when she had started working for the Emperor"s Club, or how often she had liaisons(An adulterous relationship; an affair.暧昧的关系,私通) arranged through the ring. Asked when she met Governor Spitzer and how many times they had seen each other, Ms. Dupré said she had no comment. As of Wednesday morning, Ms. Dupré's MySpace page recounted叙述 her "odyssey to New York from New Jersey through North Carolina, Miami, D.C., Virginia and Austin, Texas;" public records show that she lived in Monmouth County, N.J., in 2001, and in North Carolina in 2003. She owns a company, created in 2005, called Pasche New York, which her lawyer said was an entertainment business designed to further her singing career.

Music is her first love, and on the MySpace page, Ms. Dupré mentions Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill among a long list of influences, including her brother, Kyle. (She also lists Whitney Houston, Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Amy Winehouse as her top MySpace friends.) In the interview, she said she saw the Rolling Stones perform at Radio City Music Hall on their last tour after a friend gave her two tickets. "They were amazing," she said. On MySpace, her page says: "I am all about my music and my music is all about me. It flows from what I've been through, what I've seen and how I feel." She left 'a broken family' at age 17, having been abused, according to the MySpace page, and has used drugs and "been broke and homeless." "Learned what it was like to have everything and lose it, again and again," she writes. "Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. "But I made it," she continues. "I'm still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliché陈词滥调, yes, but I know it's true."

Ms. Dupré's mother, Carolyn Capalbo, 46, said that after her daughter finished sophomore year in high school, Ms. Dupré moved to North Carolina. "She was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues, but we are extremely close now," Ms. Capalbo said in a telephone interview Wednesday.In 2006, Ms. Dupré changed her legal name, according to records in Monmouth County Superior Court, from Ashley R. Youmans to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, taking her stepfather's surname since she regarded him as "the only father I have known." But in the interview, she referred to herself as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, which is how she is known on MySpace.

On the Web page is a recording of what she describes as her latest track, "What We Want," a hip-hop-inflected rhythm-and-blues tune that asks, "Can you handle me, boy?" and uses some dated slang, calling someone her "boo." "I know what you want, you got what I want," she sings in the chorus. "I know what you need. Can you handle me?" Her MySpace biography says she started singing professionally after a musician she was living with heard her singing the Aretha Franklin hit "Respect" in the shower and burst into the bathroom with his lead guitarist. She says she toured and recorded with them, then moved to Manhattan in 2004 and "spent the first two years getting to know the music scene, networking in clubs and connecting with the industry. "Now it"s all about my music, it"s all about expressing me." In the affidavit, the woman the Emperor's Club called Kristen is described as "an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds." She apparently was booked at about $1,000 an hour, placing her in the middle of the seven-diamond scale by which the prostitutes were paid up to $4,300 an hour. Ms. Capalbo said that she was "shell-shocked" when her daughter called in the middle of last week and told her she had been working as an escort and was now in trouble with the law. She said she was not sure that Ms. Dupré realized who Mr. Spitzer was when he was her client.

"She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor," Ms. Capalbo said. "But she also is a 22-year-old, not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old, and she obviously got involved in something much larger than her."

Now a Different, but No Less Dogged, Governor

When Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office 14 months ago, he seemed poised to upend(颠倒；颠覆) the capital's eternal powers-that-be当局, pledging that on "Day 1, everything changes." But Mr. Spitzer's confrontational对峙的, sometimes bellicose好战的 manner antagonized his opponents and alienated his allies; his sweeping electoral mandate dissipated(浪费) month by month, a victim of the governor's mistakes and oversteps越权. Now, as Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson prepares to succeed Mr. Spitzer, Republicans and Democrats alike are predicting an equally extensive change of atmosphere and, for better or worse, a return to comity团结 between the governor and the Legislature. Mr. Paterson's temperament气质,脾性 and style风格, his friends and fellow officials say, is as mild and subtle as Mr. Spitzer's is not.

One indication迹象 that change was in the air came from Mr. Spitzer's fiercest antagonist, Joseph Bruno, the Senate majority leader. In a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Bruno committed himself to working closely with Mr. Paterson, with whom he has enjoyed warm relations, to help the state move past the Spitzer scandal.

"We are going to partner with the lieutenant governor when he becomes governor," Mr. Bruno said. "And David has always been very open with me, very forthright. I look forward to a positive, productive relationship as soon as possible."

In politics, style and tone are crucial. But a major shift in either — and, perhaps, a lengthy honeymoon with legislative leaders — is perhaps the only sure outcome of Mr. Paterson's formal ascension to the governor's office on Monday, a event likely to be as seismic as any in New York political history. Left in doubt are many of the largest issues facing state government. What policies will Mr. Paterson pursue and will he adopt Mr. Spitzer's priorities as his own? Will he keep any of Mr. Spitzer"s top appointees in their jobs? And will he continue Mr. Spitzer's aggressive efforts to win control of the Republican-controlled State Senate — and thereby attempt to defang拔去尖牙 Mr. Bruno?

Elected to the largely ceremonial post主要是仪式上的职位 of lieutenant governor副州长, Mr. Paterson, unlike Mr. Spitzer, has no sure mandate of his own. His years as the minority leader of the State Senate left him with some legislative history, but in Albany, where the governor, the Assembly speaker, and Senate majority leader hold nearly untrammeled自由自在的, 无阻碍的 power, that post gave him relatively few significant opportunities to shape legislation. "He really didn't have a chance to develop an agenda and forcefully强有力的 act on it, because if the majority leader or the Speaker don't want it, it doesn't happen," said Douglas A. Muzzio, a professor at the Baruch College School of Public Affairs.

Mr. Paterson is considered more liberal than Mr. Spitzer on some key issues, and that could create friction with the Republicans. He opposes the death penalty and strongly supports overhauling翻修 New York's Rockefeller-era drug laws, for example. Years ago he introduced a proposal to allow noncitizens to vote. On issues like abortion and embyronic stem cell research, Mr. Paterson is staunchly liberal, as is Mr. Spitzer.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester, said Mr. Paterson was a more progressive Democrat than Mr. Spitzer, especially on economic and tax policy. "The kind of things Eliot did, in terms of hundreds of nuisance taxes小额消费品税 on the middle class but no taxes on the wealthy, I think that's the kind of thing that David will instinctively want to change," Mr. Brodsky said. "Whether he can or not I don't know, but I think his instinct will be in that direction." The fate of Mr. Spitzer's signature legislative initiatives, including proposals to reduce property taxes, revamp修补 state campaign finance laws and require a commission to redraw legislative districts, is also unclear. Mr. Spitzer's avid—and at times headlong轻率的—pursuit of some of those goals are what initially soured搞僵 his relationship with Mr. Bruno.

"One of the things you've seen is that the separation of powers is very real, the Legislature has true power," said George E. Pataki, the former governor. Still, as minority leader in the Senate, Mr. Paterson drove toward overhauling Albany's notoriously secretive legislative process, a frequent target of good-government groups. In 2003, Mr. Paterson's caucus produced a reform proposal that in some respects anticipated Mr. Spitzer's own promises to change Albany and make government more open.

Mr. Paterson will also need to make decisions about how to staff his new administration, and in particular, which of Mr. Spitzer's senior aides to keep on board留任. Mr. Pataki said Mr. Paterson would be put in a difficult position陷入困难境地 because he was "not in a position to put in place his own team," but expressed confidence that he will succeed "given his experience and the good will he has generated." The scion of a prominent Harlem political dynasty, Mr. Paterson is the son of Basil A. Paterson, a former state senator and New York secretary of state. Many believe that the elder Mr. Paterson will play a key role in advising his son during the transition, as will Bill Lynch, a former deputy mayor and now a prominent lobbyist, and other members of Harlem's political establishment.

One longtime Democratic legislative employee said it looked like Mr. Paterson was building an Albany version of the mayoral administration of David N. Dinkins. On the whole, that person noted, those operatives and officials had relatively little experience in state government, a potential liability for the new governor. Some allies believe that Mr. Paterson should also jettison(抛弃或丢弃) any of Mr. Spitzer's aides who were involved in efforts last summer to discredit Mr. Bruno