Unfortunately, beauty, a clever mind, many accomplishments and the best of manners are not the only ways to entice a man into marriage. There is also the enticing virtue of a good fortune. A good fortune, despite your appearance or manners, could get you any handsome bachelor in England.
But for our heroine, Jane Fairfax, it seems marriage would never come. She came from no noble family and had no rich cousin to inherit from. She was doomed for the position given to poor young accomplished ladies: governess.
Many would look at Jane and shake their head sadly, often saying what a shame it was that such a girl would go to waste; for she was such a girl. Not only handsome, she was well mannered, kind, wonderfully clever, and the most accomplished young lady that was ever seen. As Mrs. Campbell would often remark, if Jane had even a hundred pounds to her name, she would have every eligible bachelor in England asking for her hand in marriage and madly in love with her.
Jane was a poor orphan at the mere age of three, when her father, a Lieutenant Fairfax, fell in the line of duty. Her mother soon followed to the grave from a fever. She grew up with her loquacious aunt, Miss Bates, and her grandmother, Mrs. Bates. They were quite a pair and adored Jane endlessly. She was the jewel of their eyes. Sadly, neither Miss nor Mrs. Bates had much of a fortune or connections and lived on less than a few pounds a year. So when the opportunity of Colonel Campbell presented itself, they could hardly resist. Colonel Campbell was saved by Lieutenant Fairfax from a disease during the war, and so, to repay his life debt to the Lieutenant, he asked to take in the orphan Jane and offer her as a companion to his own daughter, a Miss Mary Campbell. Jane and Mary were around the same age and when a shy Jane stepped off the carriage into the societies of the Campbell's, they became the best of friends.
As Jane grew up with the Campbells, she was much adored in their society. She was the voice of reason to Mary Campbell's often rash decisions. She was the young lady Mrs. Campbell could count on to entertain guests with her accomplishments at the pianoforte. Jane was the only person in the house Colonel Campbell could discuss his ideas about the world and books. Combined with her gentle personality, Jane found her place with the Campbells.
When she was sixteen, she realized that despite the fact that she was growing up in a house of great comfort and fortune, she had none herself. When she was sixteen, Jane started to realize the paths that young woman of her status would follow. Either she married well or she followed the paths of a governess, the slave trade of the young women of Europe. Seeing as she had merely fifty pounds a year, Jane knew that the latter was her only option.
Even finding a middle class clergyman to marry her seemed hard. And so poor Jane Fairfax could only prepare herself for that inevitable fate of governess and teaching spoiled young children how to do arithmetic. That is, until one summer came along that changed her life forever.