As her familiarity with Hunt and his studio increased, Lizzie would examine the walls with Hunt's sketches and studies tacked to them. One drawing in particular caught her eye: a woman standing before a web of wound yarn. She seemed to be entangled in it, pushing at the threads that bound her, with a halo of cracked round mirrors, circling a larger mirror on the wall behind her. The image fixated Lizzie. It was a strange, supernatural scene of a woman being attacked by her own handiwork.

"It's from Tennyson," she heard Hunt say over her shoulder. "'The Lady of Shalott.'"

She nodded mutely still studying the captive woman and trying to make out the images in each of the roundels.

One day she arrived with a volume of Tennyson under her arm and array of questions for Hunt. "You've read the poem?" he asked.