ageable 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 from her father, the two sisters being the only
children of Schuyler Van Vleyden. She was a soured, morose old maid, and
probably saw some congeniality of disposition in her eldest nephew which
caused her to single him out as her heir. After he attained to years of
manhood, he always manifested a decided antipathy to ladies' society, and
was generally looked upon as a confirmed old bachelor; so that when he
announced to his mother the fact of his engagement to Mrs. Archer's pretty
governess, Miss Nugent, her distress of mind was fully equaled by her
astonishment. The match met with her strongest disapproval, as was to have
been expected; for it was hardly probable that she, the oldest surviving
representative of the old Knickerbocker family the Van Vleydens, an
acknowledged leader of society by the triple right of wealth, birth and
intellect, should be inclined to welcome very warmly as a daughter-in-law
the penniless beauty who had been occupied for some months past in
teaching Mrs. Archer's little daughters the rudiments of French and music.
Moreover, the investigations and inquiries respecting the young lady's
origin which she had at once caused to be instituted on hearing of her
son's engagement, had revealed a state of affairs which had placed Miss
Nugent in a very unenviable light. Her parents were well born, though
poor. She was the daughter of a curate in the North of England, who had
lost his young wife by heart disease when Marion was but a few months old,
and two years later Mr. Nugent died of consumption, leaving his little
daughter to the care of his unmarried and elderly brother,