When the steamer “City of New York” left her moorings, there leaned against the rail among the excited passengers two figures noticeable for manly grace and feminine beauty. Norman de Vere and his beautiful bride Thea in a lovely steamer costume of Russia blue, her gold curls streaming on the breeze like sunshine, her blue eyes beaming with shy happiness. No wonder that every eye rested on her with wonder and admiration, and that even the listless, haughty old Englishman, past sixty years old, started and moved nearer to the handsome pair, putting up his eyeglass to scan them the better. “Jove! what an out-and-out beauty! A real English face, too--pink and white, with the loveliest shadings. Who can she be? Heavens!” His eyes had wandered to her male companion. Lord Stuart, for it was no other, had recognized in the darkly handsome, beardless face of Thea’s companion an old acquaintance, Norman de Vere. With a grim smile the old nobleman watched the pair, drawing very correct conclusions. “A wedding-tour! He has married again? Camille, then, that creature of ice and fire, of jealousy and treachery, of love and hate, must be dead at last. Peace to her wicked soul!” He watched the wedded pair with musing, thoughtful eyes, while his mind went back over the long years to the time when he had been Camille de Vere’s adoring slave, and plotted treachery against the princely looking man yonder, whose face in repose showed in its gravity faint traces yet of the storm through which his soul had passed. “There was more in him than I thought, dupe of Camille that I was!” he muttered. “She was only playing me off to make her value greater in his eyes, for she loved him, as I soon proved to my chagrin. Well, she was not worthy of either--certainly not of this man who has risen like a phenix from his ashes, and made himself a name that rings from one continent to another! I wonder if I dare resume the old acquaintance?” CHAPTER XLVIII. Lord Stuart was most anxious to approach Norman de Vere when he found out for certain that the beautiful young girl was his bride. If Camille was indeed dead, he wanted to pay her memory the only tribute he could under the circumstances--the assurance that her husband’s suspicions of her virtue were unfounded. But they had been several days out before he had the slightest opportunity to carry out his desire, for Norman and his young bride were inseparable, and so entirely absorbed in each other that they seemed to have neither eyes nor ears for any one else. At length Thea was attacked by the fell demon of seasickness, and was forced to keep her state-room for twenty-four hours, and the first time that Norman came on deck alone the nobleman hastened to speak to him.