Rachel--I was going to say fortunately, but it may be as just to say _un_fortunately--was one of those who seem to make the best of every trifling advantage: she had grown, without much effort of her own, into what might be termed a lady, in appearance, in manners, and in speech.
The second Mrs.Verner also took an interest in her; and nearly a year before this period, on Rachel's eighteenth birthday, she took her to Verner's Pride as her own attendant.
A fascinating, lovable child had Rachel Frost ever been: she was a fascinating, lovable girl.

Modest, affectionate, generous, everybody liked Rachel; she had not an enemy, so far as was known, in all Deerham.
Her father was nothing but a labourer on the Verner estate; but in mind and conduct he was superior to his station; an upright, conscientious, and, in some degree, a proud man: her mother had been dead several years.

Rachel was proud too, in her way; proud and sensitive.
Rachel, dressed in her bonnet and shawl, passed out of the house by the front entrance.

She would not have presumed to do so by daylight; but it was dusk now, the family not about, and it cut off a few yards of the road to the village.

The terrace--which you have heard of as running along the front of the house--sloped gradually down at either end to the level ground, so as to admit the approach of carriages.
Riding up swiftly to the door, as Rachel appeared at it, was a gentleman of some five or six and twenty years.