The fifth story, at least a hundred feet in air above the inner court, and nearly thrice that elevation above the base of the scarped mount on which the castle stood, contained the Lady's bower; and its whole area of ninety feet by sixty was divided, in the first instance, laterally by three partitions, into three apartments, each sixty feet in length by thirty wide. Of these, however, the first and last were subdivided equally in two squares of thirty feet. The whole of the bower, thus, contained a handsome ante-chamber, opening from the great staircase, with a large room for the waiting-women to the right, communicating with the turret chamber corresponding to the stairway. Beyond the vestibule, by which access was had to it, lay the grand ladies' hall, furnished with all the superabundance of splendor and magnificence, and all the lack of real convenience, which was the characteristic of the time; divans, and deep settles, and ponderous arm-chairs covered with gold and velvet; embroideries and emblazoned foot-cloths on the floor; mirrors of polished steel, emulating Venetian crystals, on the walls; mighty candelabra of silver gilt; tables of many kinds, some made for the convenience of long-forgotten games, some covered with cups and vessels of gold, silver, and richly-colored glass, and one or two, smaller, and set away in quiet nooks, with easy seats beside them, showing the feminine character of the occupants, by a lute, a gittern, and two or three other musical implements long since fallen into disuse; pages of music written in the old musical notation of the age; some splendidly-bound and illuminated missals and romances, in priceless manuscript, each actually worth its weight in gold; silks and embroideries; a working-stand, with a gorgeous surcoat of arms half finished, the needle sticking in the superb material where the fairy fingers had left it, when last called from their gentle task; and great vases full of the finest flowers of the season. Such was the aspect of the room, beheld by the declining rays of the sun, which had already sunk so low that his stray beams, instead of falling downward through the gorgeous hues of the tinted-windows, streamed upward into that lofty place, playing on the richly-carved and gilded ceilings, catching here on a mirror, there on a vase of gold or silver, and sending hundreds of burning specks of light dancing through the motley haze of gold and purple, which formed the atmosphere of that almost royal bower.