The Saxons, the Danes, the Normans, the
Saintlowes, the Clintons, the Montforts, the Mortimers, the
Plantagenets, great though they were in arms and magnificence, had
never, she said, caused her to raise her head from the waters which hid
her crystal palace. But a greater than all these great names had now
appeared, and she came in homage and duty to welcome the peerless
Elizabeth to all sport which the castle and its environs, which lake or
land, could afford! The queen received the address with great courtesy
and the Lady of the Lake vanished, and Arion, who was amongst the
maritime deities, appeared upon his dolphin in her place. But amidst all
this pageantry Sir Walter throws a side-light on Mervyn's Tower, where
we see a prisoner, a pale, attenuated, half dead, yet still lovely lady,
Amy Robsart, the neglected wife of Leicester, incarcerated there while
her husband is flirting with the queen in the gay rooms above. Her
features are worn with agony and suspense as she looks through the
narrow window of her prison on the fireworks and coloured fires outside,
wondering perhaps whether these were emblems of her own miserable life,
"a single spark, which is instantaneously swallowed up by the
surrounding darkness--a precarious glow, which rises but for a brief
space into the air, that its fall may be lower.
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