Her proud little heart was broken at the prospect of returning to Wavertree to be snubbed and humbled by Phyllis, and possibly by servants of the same disposition as Grant.

For the moment she could not remember all those worse horrors which her imagination had been conjuring up, and from which she was actually saved.

She stood trembling and shaking in the storm of her grief, trying to stem her floods of tears with her quivering little hands, and unable to keep them from raining through her fingers on to the floor.
Mrs.Enderby sighed.

Though she could not know all Hetty's thoughts, she guessed some of them, and her heart sank lower than ever at the thought of the trouble which might come of the introduction of so stormy an element into her hitherto peaceful household.

However, she was not a woman to flinch from a duty, when once she had made up her mind to recognize it.
"Come, come, my child!" she said, "you have been passing through a great trial, but you must try to be brave and make yourself happy with us." Had Mrs.Enderby taken poor Hetty in her arms and given her a motherly kiss, much would have been done to heal the wounds made in the child's sensitive heart.