er the fire, Willie's hand clasped in hers. 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. But since then--every day, every hour had been
grinding, scorching her away--fashioning in flame and fever this new
Marcella who sat here, looking impatiently into another life, which
should know nothing of the bonds of the old.

Ah, yes!--her _thought_ could distinguish between the act and the man,
between the man and his class; but in her _feeling_ all was confounded.
This awful growth of sympathy in her--strange irony!--had made all
sympathy for Aldous Raeburn impossible to her. Marry him?--no!
no!--never! But she would make it quite easy to him to give her up.
Pride should come in--he should feel no pain in doing it. She had in her
pocket the letter she had received from him that afternoon. She had
hardly been able to read it. Ear and heart were alike dull to it.

From time to time she probably slept in her chair. Or else it was the
perpetual rush of images and sensations through the mind that hastened
the hours. Once when the first streaks of the March dawn were showing
through the curtains Minta Hurd sprang up with a loud cry:

"Oh, my God! Jim, _Jim!_ Oh, no!--take that off. Oh, _please_, sir,
please! Oh, for God's sake, sir!"

Agony struggled with sleep. Marcella, shuddering, held and soothed her,
and for a while sleep, or rather the drug in her veins, triumphed again.
For another hour or two she lay restlessly tossing from side to side,
but unconscious.

Willie hardly moved all night. Again and again Marcella held beef-t