startled

“If it had grown up,” she said to herself, “it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.” And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, “if one only knew the right way to change them—” when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear.

Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little.

She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until she was startled by a hand on her shoulder.