“Just so,” said Mrs. Rushton; “and now you may be sure that she will be educated, trained, dressed, and everything else, just as if she had been in her mother’s house.  As for her own people coming for her, I am not sure that I shall give her up if they do.  Not unless I have grown tired of her in the meantime.”

“Tired of her!” echoed Mrs. Kane, looking at her visitor in great surprise; “surely, madam, you do not think you will get tired of our little Hetty!”

“I hope not, my good woman; but even if I do you cannot complain, as in that case I shall give her back to you; that is, if it happens before her friends come to fetch her.  Unless you are pretending to grieve now, you cannot be sorry at the prospect of having her again.”

“That’s true,” said the poor woman in a puzzled tone, and she still looked wistfully at the handsome visitor sitting before her.  She did not know how to express herself, and she was afraid of offending the lady who was going to be Hetty’s mother; yet she felt eager to make some remonstrance against the injustice of the proceeding which Mrs. Rushton spoke of as within the bounds of possibility.  She believed in her heart that a great wrong would be done if the child, having been educated and accustomed to luxury for years, were to be carelessly thrown back into a life of lowly poverty.  However, the trouble that was in her heart could not find its way through her lips, and she tried to think that Mrs. Rushton spoke only in jest.

“It is altogether like a romance,” that lady was saying as she folded up the baby garment and put it away in a pretty scented satchel which she wore at her side.  “I have not met with anything so interesting for years, and I promise myself a great deal of pleasure in the matter.”

“May Hetty come to see me sometimes?” asked Mrs. Kane, humbly curtseying her good-bye, when her visitor was seated in her pony phaeton and gathering up the reins for flight.

“Oh, certainly, as often as you please,” answered Mrs. Rushton gaily, and touching the ponies with her whip she was soon out of sight; while poor Mrs. Kane retreated into her cottage to have a good motherly cry over the tiny broken shoes and the little washed-out faded frocks which were now all that remained to her of her foster-daughter.

CHAPTER V.

A lonely child.

Mrs. Rushton having adopted Hetty, set about extracting the utmost amount of amusement possible from the presence of the child in her home.  She soon grew anxious to get away from her brother’s “unpleasantly sensible remarks,” and Isabel’s gentle excuses for her conduct, which annoyed her even more, as they always suggested motives for her actions which were far beyond her ken, and seemed far-fetched, over-strained, and absurd.  So she took the child to London, where she introduced her to her friends as her latest plaything.