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,