Trollope introduces Lizzie Greylock -- who will become Lady Eustace -- as a girl who, though her father has no particular fortune "went about everywhere with jewels on her fingers, and red gems hanging around her neck, and yellow gems pendent from her ears, and white gems shining in her black hair."
Her father's interests to his very deathbed are limited to "whist, wine, and wickedness in general." On his death, Lizzie goes to live with her horrid aunt Lady Linlithgow, who she calls, with good reason, "the old vulturess."
Lizzie cuts a deal with her father's debtors to retain her jewels until she can finalize her match with the wealthy Sir Florian Eustace.
One additional apparent appeal of Sir Florian for Lizzie is that he is dying. Sir Florian combines selfless nobility and thoughtless vice: "he was one who denied himself no pleasure, let the cost be what it might in health, pocket, or morals."
"Blear-eyed in his ways around town," Sir Florian mistakes the calculating Lizzie for the "the purest, the truest, and the noblest" of women.
Lizzie: "As she was utterly devoid of true tenderness, so she was also devoid of conscience."
Lizzie engineers her marriage to Sir Florian quickly, and he dies of his lingering infirmity less than a year later. "She had so far played her game well, and had won her stakes."
Lizzie's reptilian allure: "her figure was lithe and soft and slim and slender . .. She was almost snake-like in her rapid bendings and the almost too easy gestures of her body."
Lizzie's eyes: "blue and clear, bright as cerulian waters. They were long, large eyes -- but very dangerous. To those who knew how to read a face, there was danger plainly written in them. Poor Sir Florian had not known."
After Sir Florian's death, Lizzie gives birth to an heir and, of seemingly just as much concern to the family, makes claim to a family heirloom -- a massive diamond necklace valued at £10,000.
Lizzie's childhood friend, the governess Lucy Morris, is her opposite in both temperment and approach to life. Straightforward and accepting of her status -- she envies no one. Yet "to herself, no one was her superior." However admirable, she is, Trollope informs us, not a heroine.
The Tory temperment to see all change, even that which benefits them, as ill and feel "well-assured that all good things are gradually being brought to an end by the voice of the people."
Lizzie's cousin -- and Lucy's beloved -- Frank Graystock is a Tory M.P. not from ideology but from opportunity.
Lizzie's brother-in-law, John Eustace, hopes to induce Frank to marry his brother's troublesome widow -- "she is making herself queer . . . she doesn't know know what she ought to be at, and what she ought not. You could tell her."
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