She wasn't on her death bed. She was a mobile old lady who was flown out to a marine vessel to talk to scientists. She dies in her sleep at the end of "old age" and isn't suffering from any ailment. Also, the story is about how a poor boy showed a rich girl a different life and rescued her from her abusive fiance. What woman wouldn't want to be rescued from an abusive relationship by 20 year old Leo on the world's most extravagant cruise ship? Then at the end after she dies, she sees her long lost love in the context she remembers him: dapper, well dressed, and surrounded by gilded beautiful fixtures and things at the stairwell.