“There is nothing to be done,” he said.  “She is dead.  I feared some such catastrophe when I saw her last evening.  She was in the last stages of heart disease.”

“And who was she?—­what was her name?” asked kind-hearted Captain Wessels, looking down with pitying eyes at the fair pale face.

The steward brought his lists.

“Berth No. 22,” he read—­“Miss Rhoda Steele.”

“And this young lady?” continued the captain, turning to the other occupant of the state-room, who had sunk back as if exhausted on the sofa, still enveloped in the shrouding folds of her large waterproof cloak.

She raised her head.  The answer came after a moment’s hesitation—­came with a strange, defiant ring in its tone: 

“My name is Marion Nugent.”

Chapter II.

Under Full Sail.

More than a year has passed away since the events narrated in our first chapter took place, and the curtain now rises on a far different scene—­a dinner-party in one of the most splendid of the gorgeous mansions on Madison avenue, New York.

Mrs. Walton Rutherford, the giver of the entertainment in question, was a member of a class unhappily now fast dying out of New York society—­one of those ladies of high social position and ancient lineage who adorn the station which they occupy as much by their virtues as by their social talents.  A high-minded, pure-souled matron, a devoted wife and mother, as well as a queen of society, inheriting the noble qualities of her Revolutionary forefathers as well as their great estates—­such was the lady who presided over the brilliant festivity we are about to describe.  She had been left for many years a widow, and her surviving children—­two sons, Clement and Horace—­were both of mature age; Horace, the younger, being just thirty years old, and Clement, the elder, some seven years his senior.  Mrs. Rutherford herself was a few years over sixty.  A year or two before the period at which our story opens a terrible misfortune had befallen her.  Amaurosis—­that most insidious and unmanageable of diseases of the eye—­had attacked her vision, and in a few months after it declared itself she was totally, hopelessly blind.  But, although debarred by her infirmity from going into society, she still received her friends in her own home; and her evening receptions and elegant dinners were always cited as being among the most agreeable and successful entertainments of the season.

Another sorrow had recently come to trouble the calm of her honored and tranquil existence—­the marriage of her eldest son.  Clement Rutherford, unlike any other member of the family, was a cold, reserved man, unpleasant in temper and disagreeable in manner.  When he was still quite a boy, his mother’s only sister, Miss Myra Van Vleyden, had died, and had bequeathed to him the large fortune which she had inherited conjointly with Mrs. Rutherford