And Marlborough found a fiancé with something he desperately needed—money, which would ensure the upkeep of Blenheim. So much so that he broke things off with an English lady he’d long been infatuated with. “It was that afternoon that he must have made up his mind to marry me and to give up the girl he loved, as he told me so tragically soon after our marriage,” Consuelo wrote. “For to live at Blenheim in the pomp and circumstance he considered essential needed money.”

Money he got. After their divorce in 1907, the press got wind of the exact terms of the Vanderbilt and Marlborough’s agreement. The Duke was to receive $100,000 yearly—around $3.2 million today. He also got $2.5 million in railroad stock, which adjusted for inflation, is around $81 million. Consuelo, meanwhile, also received a sizable allowance.

Consuelo tried to go against her mother’s wishes. She confronted her at their home in Newport, where Alva forbade her to have any visitors in case they snuck in messages from Rutherford.

“I considered I had a right to choose my own husband. These words, the bravest I have ever uttered, brought down a frightful storm of protest. I suffered every searing reproach, heard every possible invective hurled at the man I love,” she wrote.

Heartbroken and backed against a corner, Consuelo agreed to the engagement. She became the most eminent example of what is now known as a “dollar princess”: or, wealthy American heiresses who married aristocratic English men. They got social clout and titles. In return, men received a sizeable dowry, often used to run their estates. According to the Library of Congress, by the late 1800s, American heiresses had married more than a third of the members in the House of Lords.

In 1895, Consuelo and the Duke married in New York City at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. Her mother had Consuelo under intense watch in the moments before the wedding, in case she tried to run away. “I spent the morning of my wedding day in tears and alone; no one came near me. A footman had been posted at the door of my apartment and not even my governess was admitted.” The wedding was delayed for 20 minutes as Gladys had been crying so much that her eyes swelled up.