It was, in truth, none other than that precocious marvel of England who
but a year before had taken the breath from the House of Commons, and had
sent his fame flying over the Channel and across the wide Atlantic; the
talk of London, who set the fashions, cringed not before white hairs, or
royalty, or customs, or institutions, and was now, at one and twenty,
Junior Lord of the Admiralty--Charles James Fox. His face was dark,
forbidding, even harsh--until he smiled. His eyebrows were heavy and
shaggy, and his features of a rounded, almost Jewish mould. He put me
in mind of the Stuarts, and I was soon to learn that he was descended
from them.

As he entered the room I recall remarking that he was possessed of the
supremest confidence of any man I had ever met. Mrs. Manners he greeted
in one way, Mr. Marmaduke in another, and Mr. Walpole in still another.
To Comyn it was "Hello, Jack," as he walked by him. Each, as it were,
had been tagged with a particular value.

Chagrined as I was at the interruption, I was struck with admiration.
For the smallest actions of these rare men of master passions so compel
us. He came to Dorothy, whom he seemed not to have perceived at first,
and there passed between them such a look of complete understanding that
I suddenly remembered Comyn's speech of the night before, "Now it is
Charles Fox." Here, indeed, was the man who might have won her. And yet
I did not hate him. Nay, I loved him from the first time he addressed
me. It was Dorothy who introduced us.

"I think I have heard of you, Mr. Carvel," he said, making a barely
perceptible wink at Comyn.

"And I think I have heard of you, Mr. Fox," I replied.