"As though Alex hasn't texted you photos," he says with a laugh, going down the wide front steps to join Caleb on the drive.

From this approach, Black Elm is imposing, exactly as it was designed to be generations and generations hence; a display of the newly-minted Arlington fortune, a dream raised among what had once been the woods and fields of Connecticut. Not so, here, but the Darrow countryside is similar enough that it's not that jarring a change. "And it's not going to mean anything if I tell you it's a Renaissance Revival mansion, not a true castle, is it?"