Ndw Jersey- The brunette at the center of Eliot Spitzer’s spectacular downfall is a 22-year-old runaway from the Jersey Shore who came to the city to be a singer and ended up toppling a governor.

The stunning revelation came on a day of high drama that began with Spitzer’s resignation and ended with the confession from sexy Ashley Alexandra Dupré, who is just four years older than Spitzer’s eldest daughter.

“I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster,” said Dupré, who was born Ashley Youmans and raised in Belmar, N.J.

The amazing disclosures came on a day when:

Spitzer, his wounded wife, Silda, by his side, resigned in disgrace two days after being linked to a high-class prostitution ring. “I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people’s work,” he said, announcing he’ll hand over the reins of government on Monday.

Lt. Gov. David Paterson prepared to take control of the Empire State, the first black – and legally blind – person to hold the governor’s office in New York.

Federal investigators probing the Emperors Club VIP escort serv.ice said they did not cut a deal with Spitzer. That means he’s not off the hook for paying “Kristen” $4,300 for a romp on the eve of Valentine’s Day – or for possible charges of financial hanky-panky.

Trading stopped on Wall Street and on desks across the country as slack-jawed brokers watched the former Sheriff of Wall Street give his resignation speech.

Investigators looking into whether Spitzer, 48, used state dollars to subsidize his illicit shenanigans were trying to match his liaisons to trips he took to Washington, Miami and Dallas.

In an interview with the newspaper, she refused to give details of her love connection with the governor, but said she fears she will be cast as the villainess in the scandalous drama. “This has been a very difficult time,” she said. “It is complicated.”

Dupré, whom Spitzer paid for a two-hour roll in the sheets Feb. 13 at the swanky Mayflower Hotel in Washington, said she’s been holed up in her high-rise apartment in Chelsea since the scandal broke Monday.

She said her sordid involvement in the state’s biggest political scandal comes as she is coping with a failed romance.

The high-priced call girl said her boyfriend recently “walked out” on her after a blowup stemming from her discovery that he had fathered two children.

Dupré’s lawyer, Don Buchwald, said the high school dropout has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, presumably investigating the prostitution ring, Emperors Club VIP, which arranged her rendezvous with Spitzer.

On her MySpace page, Dupré details the hard-luck odyssey that took her from a broken home to New York City with stops in North Carolina, Miami, Washington, Virginia and Austin, Tex.

She says she has abused drugs and was once homeless.

“But, I survived, on my own,” boasts the 5-foot-5 beauty, whose call girl alias is Kristen.

She says her dream is to be a blues singer.

“I am all about my music, and my music is all about me . . . .” she writes on her Web page. “It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel.”

Dupré says she moved to the city in 2004. “I live in New York and am on top of the world,” she writes. “I love this city and my life here.” She says it wasn’t easy.

“When I was 17, I left home,” she writes. “It was my decision and I’ve never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split.

“Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music.”

A hip-hop song she penned and posted on her Web site is titled “What We Want” and contains soulful and saucy lyrics:

“I know what you want
You’ve got what I want
I know what you need
Can you handle me?”

She says her desire to be a singer began when a former boyfriend overheard her singing an Aretha Franklin classic.

“One day, I was in the shower singing ‘Respect,’ ” she writes. “He and his lead guitarist burst in, had me repeat it and it started. We wrote, rehearsed and toured. After recording a bit with them, I decided to move to Manhattan to pursue my music career.”

She spent her first two years here trying to break into the music scene by networking in clubs and with industry insiders.

“Now, it’s all about my music. It’s all about expressing me,” she writes. “I can sit here now, and knowingly tell you that life’s hard sometimes. But, I made it. 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.”

She doesn’t mention how she became a high-priced prostitute, but offers advice to anyone pursuing a dream.

“I can honestly tell you to never dwell on the past, but build from it and keep moving forward,” she writes.

Dupré’s stepfather, Michael DiPietro, refused to comment last night, and her brother Kyle, 26, who answered the door at the family’s Jackson, N.J., home, said, “I support her 100%.”

But former classmates at Wall High School in Wall Township, N.J., which Dupré attended until her sophomore year, said she had a “bad reputation.”

“She was one of those girls,” said Allison Scisco, 23, of Neptune, N.J. “You hear things, and it’s the way she carried herself.”

Another ex-classmate, who asked not to be named, said, “She definitely got around. It wasn’t even boyfriends, she just got around.”

But Chris Minardi, 23, of Wall, said he used to drink with Dupré. “I thought she always had a good personality, and she was a gorgeous, gorgeous girl. She was definitely flirty,” he said. “We all can’t believe it down here that someone from here brought down the governor of New York.”

Dupré’s mother, Carolyn Capalbo, 46, confirmed her daughter’s wild-child history, saying, “She was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues, but we are extremely close now.”

“She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,” Capalbo told The Times. “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.”