He would go to New York and lead a life of frugal extravagance, economical in comforts (as we understand them) and expensive in pleasures.
New York, with its adjuncts of Saratoga and Newport, was to him what Paris is to many Americans.

In his imagination it was the height of grandeur and happiness to have a box at the opera, to lounge in Broadway, and to dance at the hops of the Saratoga hotels.

New Mexico! he would turn his back on it; he would never set eyes on its dull poverty again.

As for Clara?
Well, of course she would share in his gayeties; was not that enough for any reasonable woman?
But here was this stumbling-block of a Thurstane.

In the presence of a handsome rival, who, moreover, had started first in the race, slow was far from being sure.