First, because Mr.
Layard was less likely to find her when he called, and secondly, that for her it had a strange fascination.

Indeed, she loved the place, clothed as it was with a thousand memories of those who had been human like herself, but now--were not.

She would read the inscriptions upon the chancel stones and study the coats-of-arms and names of those departed, trying to give to each lost man and woman a shape and character, till at length she knew all the monuments by appearance as well as by the names inscribed upon them.
One of these dead, oddly enough, had been named Stella Ethel Smythe, daughter of Sir Thomas Smythe, whose family lived at the old hall now in the possession of the Layards.

This Stella had died at the age of twenty-five in the year 1741, and her tombstone recorded that in mind she was clean and sweet, and in body beautiful.

Also at the foot of it was a doggerel couplet, written probably by her bereaved father, which ran: "Though here my Star seems set, I know 'twill light me yet." Stella, the live Stella, thought these simple words very touching, and pointed them out to Morris.