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.

[Lucie Austin, aged fifteen, from a sketch by a school friend: ill4.jpg]

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.