on himself to assert; but if there be a heroine, that
heroine shall not be Lady Eustace. Poor Lizzie Greystock!--as men
double her own age, and who had known her as a forward, capricious,
spoilt child in her father's lifetime, would still call her. She did
so many things, made so many efforts, caused so much suffering to
others, and suffered so much herself throughout the scenes with which
we are about to deal, that the story can hardly be told without
giving her that prominence of place which has been assigned to her in
the last two chapters.

Nor does the chronicler dare to put forward Lucy Morris as a heroine.
The real heroine, if it be found possible to arrange her drapery for
her becomingly, and to put that part which she enacted into properly
heroic words, shall stalk in among us at some considerably later
period of the narrative, when the writer shall have accustomed
himself to the flow of words, and have worked himself up to a state
of mind fit for the reception of noble acting and noble speaking. In
the meantime, let it be understood that poor little Lucy Morris was
a governess in the house of old Lady Fawn, when our beautiful young
widow established herself in Mount Street.

Lady Eustace and Lucy Morris had known each other for many
years,--had indeed been children together,--there having been some
old family friendship between the Greystocks and the Morrises. When
the admiral's wife was living, Lucy had, as a little girl of eight or
nine, been her guest. She had often been a guest at the deanery. When
Lady Eustace had gone down to the bishop's palace at Bobsborough, in
order that an heir to the Eustaces might be born under an auspicious
roof, Lucy Morris was with the Greystocks. Lucy, who was a year
younger than Lizzie, had at that time been an orphan for the last
four years. She too had been left penniless, but no such brilliant
future awaited her as that which Lizzie had earned for herself. There
was no countess-aunt to take her into her London house. The dean and
the dean's wife and the dean's daughters had been her best friends,
but they were not friends on whom she could be dependent. They were
in no way connected with her by blood. Therefore, at the age of
eighteen, she had gone out to be a child's governess. Then old Lady
Fawn had heard of her virtues,--Lady Fawn, who had seven unmarried
daughters running down from seven-and-twenty to thirteen, and Lucy
Morris had been hired to teach English, French,