e
captain accompanied her back to the state-room.

It was a pitiful sight that met their eyes. The young girl lay motionless
in her berth, her face tinged with a livid bluish hue, her eyes closed,
and her small hands clenched as if in agony.

"The doctor!--run for the doctor!" was the instant and universal
exclamation. The doctor came. One look at the pallid face, one touch on
the slender wrist, and he turned with a grave face to the bystanders.

"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 unman