Scarlett O'Hara, who had been considered by many the most attractive girl in Clayton County, had enjoyed all the pleasures a great fortune can provide, only to lose everything and have to fight for her own survival. That Scarlett died the same day she understood that Rhett was never going to come back. Or at least that part of her personality became so hidden that only someone who had intimately known her would have been able to find some of the old flame in her shriveled green eyes.
Now that she had that preposterous amount of riches that she had been coveting for so many years, she discovered that it no longer signified as she hadn't anybody at her side to enjoy it. But a part of her knew that those were all absurd romantic considerations, as she had learned from the war like all the rest of the people of the South to fully appreciate a comfortable bed and a solid roof above her head, and her expensive tastes in delicate foods and extravagant, fashionable clothes were so inherent to her own personality as her extreme greediness.
No, Scarlett knew that wealth was not something to be easily despised, but she deeply missed Rhett or maybe, as he had hinted to her in one of their later exchanges, she missed that energy that only having an impossible objective could supply. She felt empty, alone, and old, and that last thing was what she could fear the most. How was even possible for Scarlett O'Hara to feel old? She never thought that she would live enough to feel that way. The Irish blood that was running through her veins was fighting with all her forces against that situation, but the Robillard blood, Ellen's blood, seemed to accept it all like a natural thing.
Scarlett, who had always secretly wished to become a true lady like her mother and had never been capable of it despite all her efforts, now had to confront herself with the disgusting truth that the only way of reaching that goal was to sacrifice all the vitality of her father's blood. Now she was a lady for the others, it was true, but she felt dead inside. She started to understand, horrified, that maybe something exactly like that had happened to Ellen Robillard, and she had to force herself to forget that thought, that blasphemy of thinking that her mother hadn't been a lady and a saint for her own virtues but because life hadn't given her any other choice.
Scarlett O'Hara, who now owned everything but had nothing she really cared for, had decided to start a new life far away from Rhett, Ashley, and her daughter and son, and although the children had never been of any importance to her, to distance herself from the two persons who had marked her life in so many ways felt like an amputation. It was not so surprising after all that she was slowly losing all her vitality as the O'Hara blood kept flowing through her open wound.
No, Scarlett was not used to accepting defeat or to retreating, but now her confused mind couldn't find any other solution. Rhett's determination had been so strong and her own disenchantment with Ashley so intense, that she had to flee and keep running as fast as she could. Especially now that Tara, without Mammy's hearty presence, was only the sinister grave of her youth and hopes, a place she could only visit in her frequent nightmares.
Scarlett O'Hara, who had once been a fine example of what all the energy and strong will of the New World was capable of, had arrived in Europe tired and defeated, but it was difficult to determine how much of her had remained in America when she had left the continent.