Foreshadowing, a hint of events that will occur later in the novel, plays a role throughout The Second Mrs. Astor, accentuating the suspense and dramatic irony as the reader draws nearer the ending to which Madeleine refers in the prologue. In addition to alluding to the disaster that will claim Jack’s life, Madeleine hints that, in falling in love, she and Jack are both doomed.

While their rescue of the overturned sailors they bring aboard Noma during their courtship prefaces the larger shipwreck to follow, the temporary loss of Kitty during their time in Egypt signals the breakup of the family unit also. Scattered among the more obvious references to impending disaster aboard a ship are subtler images that hint at the coming tragedy. For instance, when Alice Fortune tells her story at dinner about the soothsayer who prophesied that she would end up alone in a boat and lose all she loves, Madeleine looks out the window “at the belt of stars caught behind the leaded glass: cold and remote, white as ice” (217). In a way, the coldness Madeleine feels that winter in the Fifth Avenue mansion and even in France functions both as an indication of her loneliness in that glittering world and as a foreshadowing of those long, cold hours aboard the lifeboat.