People who had been poor had become hugely rich, a few who had been rich had become poor, possessions which had been large had swelled to unnatural proportions.

Out of the West had risen fortunes more monstrous than all others.

As she told one story after another, Bettina realised, as she had done often before, that it was impossible to enter into description of the life and movements of the place, without its curiously involving some connection with the huge wealth of it--with its influence, its rise, its swelling, or waning.
"Somehow one cannot free one's self from it.

This is the age of wealth and invention--but of wealth before all else.

Sometimes one is tired--tired of it." "You would not be tired of it if--well, if you were I, said Lady Anstruthers rather pathetically.
"Perhaps not," Betty answered.