nt bereavement had made her the target of every
impecunious nobleman in Europe. It was perhaps only a coincidence, yet
still a fact the significance of which escaped no one, that two
staterooms had been engaged--one by the Honorable Percy Fitzhugh, a
callow Englishman who had made himself ridiculous with a Casino
chorus-girl, the other by Count Herbert von Hatzfeld, scion of an
aristocratic German family, who in a newspaper interview gave out that
he was globe-trotting for his health. Gossip had linked the names of
both men with Mrs. Phelps, and as neither had been at any pains to deny
that he was a suitor for the widow's hand, there was considerable
speculation as to whom was making most progress in her favor.

But the name on the list which excited most interest and comment among
the crowd of sightseers and seagoers who literally mobbed the big ship,
was that of Miss Grace Harmon, the beautiful daughter of the well-known
railroad magnate, whose debut in society two years before, at a splendid
ball given in her honor at the Harmon's palatial Fifth Avenue home, was
still talked about as the most brilliant and costly affair of that
season.

Grace Harmon was conspicuous for her beauty even in a land famous for
its fair women. Tall and slender, with aristocratic features and queenly
carriage, she was the typical Gibson girl. Women raved about her
wonderful complexion, her splendid eyes, her magnificent hair, her
graceful figure. They went into ecstasies over her gowns, her
beautifully arched eyebrows, academic nose, dazzling white teeth, and a
sensitive, delicately modeled mouth, that might have tempted Saint
Anthony himself. Men looking for money whispered that she was the prize
catch of the matrimonial market, being the only heir to her father's
millions, and the more enterprising laid their lines accordingly. When
she went out driving or appeared in her box at the opera, everybody
craned their necks and stared rudely, eager to feast their eyes on the
priceless gifts this favorite of fortune had received from the gods. In
their cheap hall bedrooms, timid poets wrote love-sonnets which they
mailed to her anonymously, expecting no acknowledgment, happy only that
they had expressed on paper what lay heavy on their hearts.

So far Grace had shown herself indifferent either to sentiment or
matrimonial ambitions. She had not encouraged any of the men who
showered her with attentions, and even with her intimates she declined