Coombe House had been transformed into one of the most practical nursing homes in London.

The celebrated ballroom and picture gallery were filled with cots; a spacious bedroom had become a perfectly equipped operating room; nurses and doctors moved everywhere with quiet swiftness.

Things were said to be marvellously well done because Lord Coombe himself held reins which diplomatically guided and restrained amateurishness and emotional infelicities.
He spent most of his time, when he was in the house, in the room on the entrance floor where Mademoiselle had found him when she had come to him in her search for Robin.
He had faced ghastly hours there as the war news struck its hideous variant note from day to day.

Every sound which rolled through the street had its meaning for him, and there were few which were not terrible.

They all meant inhuman struggle, inhuman suffering, inhuman passions, and wounds or death.