“We walked up to the castle and stood before the great iron-studded oak door, which has been there since the days of Queen Elizabeth.  It had not been opened for years, but a smaller one had been cut in it through which visitors passed.  For over 200 years no one had lived in the castle.  It was built by the Normans and given by William the Conqueror to one of his Norman Barons.  Finally by marriage it became the property of Sir George Vernon, who had two daughters, famous for their beauty.  Margaret Vernon married a Stanley, and on the night of the wedding Dorothy Vernon eloped with Mr. John Manners.  The story is very romantic.  The ballroom from which Dorothy stole away when the wedding party was at its height is still just as it was then, excepting for the furniture.  From the windows you can see the little stone bridge where Manners waited for her with the horses.  Haddon Hall became the property of Dorothy Manners and has remained in the hands of the Rutland family, being now owned by the Duke of Rutland.

“That is the romance of Haddon Hall, but one could make up a hundred to oneself when one walks through the different rooms.  What a queer feeling it gives me to go through the old doorways, to stop and look through the queer little windows, and on the courtyard, wondering who used, long ago, to look out of the same windows.  I wonder what they saw going on in the courtyard?

“We climbed to the top of the highest tower.  The stairway wound upward with stone steps about three feet high cut out of the wall.  At intervals we found little square rooms, very possibly where the men at arms slept.  What a view at the top!  The towers and roofs and courtyards of the castle lay before us.  All around us the lovely English country, and as far as the eye could see, hills, woodland, and the winding river.  It was glorious.  Maud and I danced a two-step in the ballroom.

“If stones could only talk!  Well, if they could I should want a long confab with each one in the old courtyard of Haddon Hall.  Who can tell, William the Conqueror himself may have stepped on some of them.”

We drove from Haddon Hall to the Peacock Inn for luncheon, going over to Chatsworth for the afternoon.  Again I turn a few leaves of the diary: 

“Chatsworth is one of the homes of the Duke of Devonshire.  The park is fourteen miles across and I don’t know how big it is, but Dr. Wrench told me the number of acres, and I think it was three or four thousand.  We drove five miles through the park before reaching the gates of Chatsworth—­shall I call it house or castle?  I have pictures of it, and it is a good thing for I could not describe it.  Dr. Wrench, being the Duke’s physician, was able to take us through the private rooms.  On entering the Hall, a broad marble staircase leads to the corridors above, from which others branch out through different parts of the house.  We walked miles, it seems, until we got to the Duke’s private library.  When you are once in the room the doors are shut.  You cannot tell how you got in or how you will get out.  On every wall the bookcases are built in and there is not an opening of any kind; not a break in the rows and rows of books.  The explanation is simply this:  the doors themselves are made to look like book shelves, painted on.