On the islet appeared a beautiful
woman, clad in a watchet-coloured silken mantle, bound with a broad
girdle, inscribed with characters like the phylacteries of the Hebrews.
Her feet and arms were bare, but her wrists and ankles were adorned with
gold bracelets of uncommon size. Amidst her long silky black hair she
wore a crown or chaplet of artificial mistletoe, and bore in her hand a
rod of ebony tipped with silver. Two nymphs attended on her, dressed in
the same antique and mystical guise. The pageant was so well managed
that the Lady of the Floating Island, having performed her voyage with
much picturesque effect, landed at Mortimer's Tower with her two
attendants, just as Elizabeth presented herself before that outwork. The
stranger then in a well-penned speech announced herself as that famous
Lady of the Lake renowned in the stories of King Arthur, who had nursed
the youth of the redoubted Sir Lancelot, and whose beauty had proved too
powerful both for the wisdom and the spells of the mighty Merlin. Since
that period she had remained possessed of her crystal dominions, she
said, despite the various men of fame and might by whom Kenilworth had
been successively tenanted.
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