These lines obviously betray a feeling of resentment, which may or may not have been justified; but they are perhaps the most delicate produced by his pen.  The pride which was always so notable a feature in Scott, probably sustained him through the keen, inward pain which it is very certain from a great many of his own words that he must have suffered in this uprooting of his most passionate hopes.  And it was in part probably the same pride which led him to form, within the year, a new tie—­his engagement to Mademoiselle Charpentier, or Miss Carpenter as she was usually called,—­the daughter of a French royalist of Lyons who had died early in the revolution.  She had come after her father’s death to England, chiefly, it seems, because in the Marquis of Downshire, who was an old friend of the family, her mother knew that she should find a protector for her children.  Miss Carpenter was a lively beauty, probably of no great depth of character.  The few letters given of hers in Mr. Lockhart’s life of Scott, give the impression of an amiable, petted girl, of somewhat thin and espiegle character, who was rather charmed at the depth and intensity of Scott’s nature, and at the expectations which he seemed to form of what love should mean, than capable of realizing them.  Evidently she had no inconsiderable pleasure in display; but she made on the whole a very good wife, only one to be protected by him from every care, and not one to share Scott’s deeper anxieties, or to participate in his dreams.  Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control.  For instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed Marmion in the Edinburgh in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was then considered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on the very day on which the review had appeared, Mrs. Scott behaved to him through the whole evening with the greatest politeness, but fired this parting shot in her broken English, as he took his leave,—­“Well, good night, Mr. Jeffrey,—­dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Review, and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it.”  It is hinted that Mrs. Scott was, at the time of Scott’s greatest fame, far more exhilarated by it than her husband with his strong sense and sure self-measurement ever was.  Mr. Lockhart records that Mrs. Grant of Laggan once said of them, “Mr. Scott always seems to me like a glass, through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of paper that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze, and no wonder.”  The bit of paper, however, never was in a blaze that I know of; and possibly Mrs. Grant’s remark may have had a little feminine spite in it.  At all events, it was not till the rays of misfortune, instead of admiration, fell upon Scott’s life, that the delicate tissue paper shrivelled up; nor does it seem that, even then, it was the trouble, so much as a serious malady that had fixed on Lady Scott before