“I am Lilias,” said the little girl; but she held back, still examining with curious though less terrified eyes. “You will give it me back if you are not Mary?” she went on, at length holding out the letter; but she took no notice of the invitation to come nearer, which Mary herself forgot in the eagerness of her anxiety to get the letter, the first communication from her brother--if it was from her brother--for so many years. She took it quickly, almost snatching it from the child’s reluctant fingers, and leaning against the doorway in her agitation, tore it hastily open. Little Lilias was agitated too, with fear and desolate strangeness, and that terrible ignorance of any alternative between safety and utter destruction which makes danger insupportable to a child. What were they to do if their claims were not acknowledged? Wander into the woods and die in the darkness like the children in the story? Little Lilias had feared nothing till that first doubt had come over her at the door of the house, where, her father had instructed her, she was to be made so happy. But if they were not taken in and made happy, what were she and Nello to do? A terror of darkness, and cold, and starvation came upon the little girl. She would wrap the big shawl about her little brother, but what if wild beasts or robbers should come in the middle of the dark? Her little bosom swelled full, the sobs rose into her throat. Oh where could she go with Nello, if this was not Mary? But she restrained the sobs by a last effort, like a little hero. She sat down on the stone edge of the causeway, and held her hands clasped tight to keep herself together, and fixed her eyes upon the lady with the letter. The lady and the letter swam and changed, through the big tears that kept coming, but she never took those great dark, intense eyes from Miss Musgrave’s face. The Italian nurse was bending over Nello, fully occupied in hushing his little plaints. Nello was tired, hungry, sleepy, cold. He had no responsibility upon him, poor little mite, to overcome the weakness of nature. He looked no more than six, though he was older, a small and delicate child; and he clung to his nurse, holding her desperately, afraid of he knew not what. She had plenty to do to take care of him without thinking of what was going on above; though the woman was indignant to be kept waiting, and cast fierce looks, in the intervals of petting Nello, upon the lady, the cold Englishwoman who was so long of taking the children to her arms. As for the cabman, emblem of the general unconcern which surrounds every individual drama, he stood leaning calmly upon his horse, waiting for the _dénoûment_, whatever it might be. Miss Musgrave would see him paid one way or another, and this was the only thing for which he needed to care.