He alone in this forlorn household _loved_ her.

Mrs.Hurd and the other children feared and depended on her.

This creature of thistle-down--this little thread and patch of humanity--felt no fear of her.

It was as though his weakness divined through her harshness and unripeness those maternal and protecting powers with which her nature was in truth so richly dowered.
He confided himself to her with no misgivings.

He was at ease when she was there.
Little piteous hand!--its touch was to her symbolic, imperative.
Eight months had she been at Mellor?
And that Marcella, who had been living and moving amid these woods and lanes all this time--that foolish girl, delighting in new grandeurs, and flattered by Aldous Raeburn's attentions--that hot, ambitious person who had meant to rule a county through a husband--what had become of her?
Up to the night of Hurd's death sentence she had still existed in some sort, with her obligations, qualms, remorses.