This legend is to be faintly traced in the interior of the ruined old hall. With the exception of the Shrewsbury coronet and the initials, you find very little suggestion of the Talbots. Everywhere the arms of Hardwick predominate in panel, fireplace, and lock. They strike the eye the instant you enter the house by the great entrance-hall. Large and magnificent, they are set forth on the right wall: in heraldic language, “a saltire engrailed azure; on a chief of the second three cinquefoils of the field,” set in a lozenge-shaped shield and bearing the aforesaid coronet. The supporters are two “stags proper, each gorged with a chaplet of roses, argent, between two bars azure.” To these supporters the lady had no right because her family had none. But she assumed them, turning to account the stag of her family crest. Her son William adopted a variation of this, and in the Devonshire arms of to-day we again find the wreathed stags proper, while the shield bears three harts’ heads. In the Mary Queen of Scots bedroom you will find in plaster work again the Hardwick arms, but also those of Cavendish and of the Countess’s mother, Elizabeth Leake. Needless to say, the house is built in the grand manner. The great entrance-hall runs to the height of two stories, and besides its panelling and old furniture has screens of tapestry. Just off the stairway on the left is the curious little chapel shut off from the landing by an open-work oak screen. Close by is a state bedroom, and adjoining it is a fine dining-room, whence a minstrels’ gallery leads to the wainscoted and tapestried drawing-room. The splendid presence-chamber, sixty-five feet long, thirty-three wide, and twenty-six high, is another remarkable feature, and besides its pictures and tapestry has the famous ancient frieze, already mentioned, in coloured plaster relief representing the Court of Diana. The choice of theme was, no doubt, out of compliment to the Queen, for her initials and arms are in this room substituted for those of the Countess, who, in spite of her dreams, never had the delight of receiving Elizabeth here.

In regard to the sheer details of furniture and tapestries the guide-books have sufficiently noted such items, and this is not the place for an inventory. But in the household lists, carefully catalogued and cherished, are noted “silver cloath of tissue and cloath of gold, velvet of sundry colours, needlework twelve feet deep, one piece of the picture of Faith and her contrary Mahomet, another piece with Temperance and her contrary Sardynapales.” And there are others “wrought with Flowers and slipps of Needlework,” while a “white Spanish rugg,” great chairs and little chairs, French stools, “a little desk of mother o’ pearl, a purple sarcanet quilt,” are duly noted, in addition to carpets and hangings galore storied with myth and legend. Good rich things over which to fight when it was a case of family quarrels! Many of these and the other famous tapestries with which the lovely house is crammed are being wisely guarded, and, where possible, delicately repaired, while taste and gracious sympathy with every object are turning the Hall into a place which is a perfect museum with the added grace of a house. The very ring—attached to the foot of the Countess’s writing-table—through which she slipped the leash of her dog, is still preserved.