cember 14.

... I heard last night from my friends in London, and I shall
certainly have the deed this week. I will send it to you
directly; but not to lose so much time, as you have been
reckoning, I will prevent any little delay that might happen by
the post, by fixing already next Wednesday for your coming here,
and on Thursday the 21st--Oh, my dear Scott, on that day I shall
be yours forever.

C. C.

_P. S._--Arrange it so that we shall see none of your family the
night of our arrival. I shall be so tired, and such a fright, I
should not be seen to advantage.

To these extracts I may add the following from the first leaf of an
old black-letter Bible at Abbotsford:--

"_Secundum morem majorum haec de familia Gualteri Scott,
Jurisconsulti Edinensis, in librum hunc sacrum manu sua
conscripta sunt._

"_Gualterus Scott, filius Gualteri Scott et Annae Rutherford,
natus erat apud Edinam 15mo die Augusti, A. D. 1771._

"_Socius Facultatis Juridicae Edinensis receptus erat 11mo die
Julii, A. D. 1792._

"_In ecclesiam Sanctae Mariae apud Carlisle, uxorem duxit
Margaretam Charlottam Carpenter, filiam quondam Joannis
Charpentier et Charlottae Volere, Lugdunensem, 24to die Decembris,
1797._"[143]

[Footnote 143: The account in the text of Miss Carpenter's
origin has been, I am aware, both spoken and written of as an
uncandid one: it had been expected that even in 1837 I would
not pass in silence a rumor of early prevalence, which
represented her and her brother as children of Lord Downshire
by Madame Charpentier. I did not think it necessary to allude
to this story while any of Sir Walter's own children were
living; and I presume it will be sufficient for me to say
now, that neither I, nor, I firmly believe, any one of them,
ever heard either from Sir Walter, or from his wife, or from
Miss Nicolson (who survived them both) the slightest hint as
to the rumor in question. There is not an expression in the
preserved correspondence between Scott, the young lady, and
the Marquis, that gives it a shadow of countenance. Lastly,
Lady Scott always kept hanging by her bedside, and repeatedly
kissed in her dying moments, a miniature of her fath