friend
succeeded in handing the fair stranger to supper--and such was his
first introduction to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.

Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal
attractions; "a form that was fashioned as light as a fay's;" a
complexion of the clearest and lightest olive; {p.247} eyes large,
deep-set and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown; and a profusion of
silken tresses, black as the raven's wing; her address hovering
between the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman who has not mingled
largely in general society, and a certain natural archness and gayety
that suited well with the accompaniment of a French accent. A lovelier
vision, as all who remember her in the bloom of her days have assured
me, could hardly have been imagined; and from that hour the fate of
the young poet was fixed.[138]

[Footnote 138: ["You may perhaps have remarked Miss Carpenter
at a Carlisle ball, but more likely not, as her figure is not
very _frappant_. A smart-looking little girl with dark brown
hair would probably be her portrait if drawn by an
indifferent hand. But I, you may believe, should make a piece
of work of my sketch, as little like the original as Hercules
to me."--Scott to P. Murray, December, 1797.--_Familiar
Letters_, vol. i. p. 10.]]

She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted
royalist, who held an office under Government,[139] and Charlotte
Volere, his wife. She and her only brother, Charles Charpentier, had
been educated in the Protestant religion of their mother; and when
their father died, which occurred in the beginning of the Revolution,
Madame Charpentier made her escape with her children, first to Paris,
and then to England, where they found a warm friend and protector in
the late Marquis of Downshire, who had, in the course of his travels
in France, formed an intimate acquaintance with the family, and,
indeed, spent some time under their roof. M. Charpentier had, in his
first alarm as to the coming Revolution, invested L4000 in English
securities--part in a mortgage upon Lord Downshire's estates. On the
mother's death, which occurred soon after her arrival in London, this
nobleman took on himself the character of sole guardian to her
children; and Charles Charpentier received in due time, through his
interest, an appointment in {p.248} the service of the East India
Company, in which he h