Mrs.Rushton had always talked to her of them in such a way as to lead her to regard them in this light.

Occasionally a strange little laugh or a few sarcastic words from Mrs.Rushton had grated on the child's ear in the midst of her foster-mother's pleasantly expressed anticipations of Hetty's future intercourse with her own relations; and the little girl had, on such occasions, felt a chill of vague fear, and a momentary pang of anxiety as to the reception she might possibly meet with from these people, none of whom had ever been found by a poor labouring man alone on a wild sea-shore, or had lived with a humble woman in a cottage.

That the "disgrace" of such a past clung round herself, Grant's disagreeable eyes would never allow her to forget.

Such were poor Hetty's disordered ideas with regard to herself and her little world, when Mrs.Rushton's carriage drew up that day before the door of Wavertree Hall.
Mrs.Enderby was seated at her embroidery in the drawing-room beside her small elegant tea-table, and looked the very ideal of an English gentlewoman in her silver-gray silk and delicate lace ruffles, and with her fair, almost colourless hair twisted in neat shining braids round the back of her head.

With her own faint sweet smile she welcomed her sister-in-law and inquired kindly for her health; and then she turned to Hetty, who stood gazing steadily in her face, utterly unconscious of her own look of anxious inquiry.
Mrs.Rushton had taken pains to make the most of Hetty's uncommon beauty on this occasion, determined to take her friends by surprise and force them into an acknowledgment of the superiority of her own taste in adopting such a child.