It was afternoon in April, 1916. G.J. rang the right bell at the entrance of the London home of the Lechfords. Lechford House, designed about 1840 by an Englishman of genius who in this rare instance had found a patron with the wit to let him alone, was one of the finest examples of domestic architecture in the West End. Inspired by the formidable palaces of Rome and Florence, the artist had conceived a building in the style of the Italian renaissance², but modified, softened³, chastened, civilised, to express the bland⁴ and yet haughty⁵ sobriety of the English climate and the English peerage. People without an eye for the perfect would have correctly described it as a large plain house in grey stone, of three storeys, with a width of four windows on either side of its black front door, a jutting⁶ cornice, and rather elaborate chimneys. It was, however, a masterpiece for the connoisseur⁷, and foreign architects sometimes came with cards of admission to pry⁸ into it professionally. The blinds of its principal windows were down—not because of the war; they were often down, for at least four other houses disputed with Lechford House the honour of sheltering the Marquis and his wife and their sole surviving  child. Above the roof a wire platform for the catching⁹ of bombs had given the mansion¹⁰ a somewhat ridiculous appearance, but otherwise Lechford House managed to look as though it had never heard of the European War.