‘Just as they entered Constitution Hill one of the ladies said to the other, looking at her watch, “We shall hardly have time to dress for the wedding.” “Wedding!” said the Queen. “Yes, Madam, it is to be at twelve.” Upon this she fainted. Lady Effingham, who had a bottle of lavender water in her hand, threw it in her face.’ The travelling bride had, up to this time, exhibited much self-possession and gaiety of spirit throughout the journey, and it was not till she came in sight of the palace that her courage seemed to fail her. _Then_, for the first time, ‘she grew frightened and grew pale. The Duchess of Hamilton smiled; the princess said, “My dear duchess, you may laugh, you have been married twice; but it’s no joke to me.”’ Walpole, writing at ‘twenty minutes past three in the afternoon, not in the middle of the night,’ says: ‘Madam Charlotte is this instant arrived; the noise of the coaches, chaise, horsemen, mob, that have been to see her pass through the parks, is so prodigious that I cannot distinguish the guns.’ When the royal carriage stopped at the garden-gate the bride’s lips trembled, and she looked paler than ever, but she stepped out with spirit, assisted by the Duke of Devonshire, lord-chamberlain. Before her stood the King surrounded by his court. A crimson cushion was laid for her to kneel upon, and (Mrs. Stuart tells us) mistaking the hideous old Duke of Grafton for him, as the cushion inclined that way, she was very near prostrating herself before the duke; but the King caught her in his arms first, and all but carried her upstairs, forbidding any one to enter. Walpole says of her that she looked sensible, cheerful, and remarkably genteel. He does not say she was pretty, and it must be confessed that she was rather plain; too plain to create a favourable impression upon a youthful monarch, whose heart, even if the story of the Quakeress be a fiction, was certainly pre-occupied by the image of a lady, who, nevertheless, figured that night among the bride’s-maids--namely, Lady Sarah Lennox. ‘An involuntary expression of the King’s countenance,’ says Mr. Galt, ‘revealed what was passing within, but it was a passing cloud--the generous feelings of the monarch were interested; and the tenderness with which he thenceforward treated Queen Charlotte was uninterrupted until the moment of their final separation.’ This probably comes much nearer to the truth than the assertion of Lady Anne Hamilton, who says: ‘At the first sight of the German princess, the King actually shrunk from her gaze, for her countenance was of that cast that too plainly told of the nature of the spirit working within.’ Lord Hardwicke is said to have sent to his wife an unfavourable description of the Queen’s features, which Lady Hardwicke read aloud to her friends. It is added that George III., on hearing of it, was greatly offended.