If she engaged a professional adviser to furnish her house, and decorate
it, you could be sure he was of the best and that his services had been
measured and balanced beforehand, and that he had been generously paid
whatever he had obtained by bargaining for it, and that the agreement
was signed and every penny of the cost entered in a little book. It was
so with everything that touched her life. She had a definite idea of
what she wanted, although she did not always want the same thing for
long; but while she did, she went about getting it in a sensible,
practical way, secured it, paid for it,--and then often threw it away.

She had felt she wanted Vincent Cricklander because he belonged to one
of the old families in New York and played polo well, and, being a great
heiress though of no pretensions to birth, she wished to have an
undisputed entry into the inner circle of her own country. He fulfilled
her requirements for quite three years, and then she felt she was
"through" with America, and wanted fresh fields for her efforts. Paris
was too easy, Berlin doubtful, Vienna and Petersburg impossible to
conquer, but London would hold out everything that she could wish for.
Only, it must be the very best of London, not the part of its society
that anyone can struggle and push and pay to get into, but the real
thing. She was "quite finished" with Vincent Cricklander, too, at this
period; to see him play polo no longer gave her any thrill. So one
morning at their lunch, on a rare occasion when they chanced to be
alone, she told him so, and asked him practically how much he would take
to let her divorce him.

But Vincent Cricklander was a gentleman, and, what is more, an American
gentleman, which means of a chivalry towards women unknown in other
countries.