The tears she shed blotted out all the anxieties and misgivings and heart-sinkings of recent weeks.

All that remained was crowded with love.
Tom, dulled and stunned, took the story in gradually, and got used to it as he went along.

He came and slept at night in the tutor's room, and felt how much worse things might have been had it not been for the stalwart protector who put hope and cheer into him, and filled the blank in his heart with sturdier views of life than the boy had ever harboured there before.
As for Jill, for a week all was blackness and darkness to her.

She felt deserted--lost.

She cried herself to sleep at night, and by day wandered over the house, peeping into her father's room, and half expecting to see him back.