The two ladies lived in a snug little house with a strictly Elizabethan front, and casement windows that looked into the poet’s garden. All that taste, and research, and an ardent love could do had been done to make Shakespeare’s house and its surroundings exactly what they were when Shakespeare lived. The wise men of Stratford had brought their offerings, in the shape of old pictures, and manuscripts, and relics of all kinds; the rooms had been restored to their original form and semblance; and pilgrims from afar had no longer need to blush for the nation which owned such a poet and held his memorials so lightly. A very different state of things from the vulgar neglect which obtained when Washington Irving visited Stratford. The maiden warders of the house were a little surprised at so late a visit, but received Daphne kindly all the same, and were disposed to be indulgent to girlish enthusiasm in so worthy a cause. It was against the rules to open the house at so late an hour; but as no light was needed, Daphne should be allowed just to creep in, and bid good-bye to the hearth beside which Shakespeare had played at his mother’s knees. ‘One would think you were going away for a long while, Miss Lawford,’ said one of the ladies, smiling at Daphne’s eager face. It was exactly what the sexton had said, and Daphne made the same answer as she had given him. ‘One never knows,’ she said. ‘Ah, but we know. You are coming home to be married in the autumn. We have heard all about it. Stratford Bells will ring a merry peal on that day, I should think; though I suppose the wedding will be at Arden Church. I am so glad you are going to settle in the neighbourhood, like your sister. What a grand place Goring Abbey is, to be sure! My sister and I drove over in a fly last summer to look at it. We went all over the house and grounds. It is a beautiful place. Yet I don’t know but that I like Mr. Turchill’s old manor-house best.’ ‘So do I,’ answered Daphne absently. ‘Of course you do!’ cried the other sister, laughing. ‘That’s only natural.’ They all three went across the garden in the moonlight, and the elder sister unlocked the house-door. ‘Would you like go in alone?’ she asked. ‘You are not afraid of ghosts?’ ‘Of Shakespeare’s ghost? No, I should dearly love to see him. I would fall on my knees and worship the beautiful spirit.’ ‘Go in, then. We’ll wait in the garden.’