Enough has been said of Cliveden to show that not only in situation but in interesting association it takes high rank among river mansions. The other pronouncedly notable high-standing river mansion is Danesfield, above Hurley, built of chalk, and reared upon the great chalk cliffs that here line the river's flood. On the slopes near, in crocus time, the hills shine purple and gold with blossom, resembling a royal carpet spread by someone's lavish hand. The place derives its name from having been the site of a Danish encampment. But Cliveden and Danesfield do not exhaust the list of fine riverside mansions, though, as they stand so high, they are more conspicuous than most. One of the most delightful and desirable of all the old houses is Bisham Abbey, not far from Marlow, picturesque in itself and redolent of old associations. There is the Bisham ghost, which spreads itself across the river in a thin, white mist which means death to those who try to penetrate it. But the most touching and pitiful tale is of a certain Lady Hoby, one of the family who held the mansion from the time of Edward VI to 1780. She is represented as wandering about in a never-ending purgatory, wringing her hands and trying to cleanse them from indelible inkstains. The story goes that she was condemned thus for her cruelty to her little son, whom, perhaps in mistaken severity, she beat so much for failure to write in his copybooks without blots that the poor child died. It was an age of sternness toward children. We know how Lady Jane Grey suffered, and thought herself "in hell" while with her parents. There were no Froebel schools or Kindergartens then; and it may be the wretched mother was trying to do her duty as she knew it. A curious confirmation of the story was found in the discovery of a number of copybooks behind a shutter during some repairs. The books were of the Tudor period and were deluged in every line with blots! [Illustration: MARLOW LOCK] Several of the Hobys are buried in the pretty little church, near to which the river laps the very edge of the churchyard. One monument is to two brothers, Sir Philip and Sir Thomas Hoby, and the epitaph on the latter, put up by his sorrowing widow, concludes with the lines:-- Give me, oh God, a husband like unto Thomas, Or else restore me to my husband Thomas. Like many another disconsolate widow she married again in a few years, so she had presumably found someone who could rank with Thomas! Leland in his _Itinerary_ mentions the Abbey as "a very pleasant delightsome place as most in England", and, indeed, so it is, with its grey stone walls, mullioned windows, and high tower rising amid the trees.