by 1912, she was past caring about the opinion of New York society. She had flouted the rules before, and now she would thumb her nose at everything that society stood for. The Gilded Age was over, and Alva—the most gilded of them all, the wearer of Catherine the Great’s pearls, the hostess of the most fantastic and expensive costume ball ever given, plotter of the most spectacular royal marriage for her daughter—was ready to burn it all to the ground.
