But even the most well-meaning never succeeded in penetrating beneath the surface of acquaintanceship. She was credited with being extremely well off. Redwithy Farm was a miniature, restored Elizabethan mansion of rare antiquity, set in the heart of a parkland of over eighty acres. During the war she had only kept English servants, some seven or eight, but from the moment peace had been declared these had been replaced one by one with foreigners, retainers from her own home in Poland. No one seriously questioned the change. One and all admitted that the conditions of Poland after the war made it a charity on the part of Madame Vladimir to rescue these poor people from such a condition of devastation and afford them the blessings and peace of the English countryside. So, through her own consummate tact, Vita was enabled to live more or less unquestioned in her English home. And such peace was justly her due, for her objects were simple and honest for the country of her adoption. She was preparing, as many another foreigner had done before her, a refuge in the hospitable heart of Britain for that father for whom she foresaw the growing threat of danger. Half-way down the winding, narrow lane she turned out through an opening which had once been a five-barred gate. She crossed a field and passed into another, and then another. Then, making her way through a small iron gateway, she entered the twenty-acre patch of larch and birch woods which stood on a hill on her own land dominating the farm. Following the narrow cart track through these woods, her fine eyes busy in every direction with the scuttling rabbits, she emerged in full view of the quaint old L-shaped house. It was a perfect picture of rural England. There was not another house in sight. Redwithy Farm seemed to be shut off from the rest of the world by the hilly surroundings of the Chilterns. The land rose up on every side but one, and that was the direction in which the ribbon-like drive wound its way eastwards between the railed-in pastures of rich grassland. The building was two-storied for the most part, but here and there dormer attic windows peeped out under the eaves of the beautifully cut thatched roof. Then, behind the house itself lay the old farm buildings, all in excellent repair, and in another direction were the heavy ancient red walls surrounding the various fruit gardens and glass ranges. Vita loved the place, and never more appreciated it than when gazing at it from this view-point. Just now there was the added charm of the ripening autumn tints lending warmth to the scene and adding to it that snug suggestion of shelter from the coming inclemencies of winter.