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re mixed up in a fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, often very pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetings from the North Sea. He afterwards told her that one of his most charming poems, 'Wenn ich am deinem Hause Des Morgens voruber geh', So freut's mich, du liebe Kleine, Wenn ich dich am Fenster seh',' etc., was meant for her whose magnificent eyes he never forgot. Two years later Mr. Austin was appointed Royal Commissioner to inquire into the grievances of the Maltese. His wife accompanied him, but so hot a climate was not considered good for a young girl, and Lucie was sent to a school at Bromley. She must have been as great a novelty to the school as the school-life was to her, for with a great deal of desultory knowledge she was singularly deficient in many rudiments of ordinary knowledge. She wrote well already at fifteen, and corresponded often with Mrs. Grote and other friends of her parents. {4} At sixteen she determined to be baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church of England (her parents and relations were Unitarians). Lord Monteagle was her sponsor and it was chiefly owing, I believe, to the influence of himself and his family, with whom she was very intimate in spite of her Radical ideas, that she took this step. [Picture: Lucie Austin, aged fifteen, from a sketch by a school friend] When the Austins returned from Malta in 1838, Lucie began to appear in the world; all the old friends flocked round them, and many new friends were made, among them Sir Alexander Duff Gordon whom she first met at Lansdowne House. Left much alone, as her mother was always hard at work translating, writing for various periodicals and nursing her husband, the two young people were thrown much together, and often walked out alone. One day Sir Alexander said to her: 'Miss Austin, do you know people say we are going to be married?' Annoyed at being talked of, and hurt at his brusque way of mentioning it, she was just going to give a sharp answer, when he added: 'Shall we make it true?' With characteristic straightforwardness she replied by the monosyllable, 'Yes,' and so they were engaged. Before her marriage she translated Niebuhr's 'Greek Legends,' which were published under her mother's name. On the 16th May, 1840, Lucie Austin and Sir Alexander Duff Gordon were married in Kensington Old Church, and the few eye-witnesses left still speak with enthusiasm of th
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