Nor longer in my false love's eye
Remain'd the tear of parting sorrow."

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 _espiègle_
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