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, German, and something of music to the two youngest Miss Fawns.
During that visit at the deanery, when the heir of the Eustaces was being born, Lucy was undergoing a sort of probation for the Fawn establishment.