While Mary took the air in this anxious little promenade up and down, Lilias sat at the hall door, looking out upon the road, looking far away for the something that was coming. She did not know that the rider on the pale horse was the most likely passenger to come that way. Happier visitors were in Lilias’ thoughts--her father himself to clear up everything, who would go and fetch Nello back, and put all right that was wrong; or Mr. Geoff, who was not so good, but yet very comforting, and between whom and Lilias there existed a link of secret alliance, unknown to anybody, which was sweet to the child. Lilias was looking out far upon the road, vaguely thinking of Geoff, for he was the most likely person to come--he who rode along the road so often to ask for the Squire: far more likely than her father, who was a hope rather than an expectation. She was looking far away, as is the wont of the dreamer, pursuing her hope to the very horizon whence it might come--when suddenly, all at once, Lilias woke to the consciousness that there was some one standing near her, close to her, saying nothing, but looking at her with that intent look which wakes even a sleeper when fixed upon him, much more a dreamer, linked to common earth by the daylight, and all the sounds and touches of ordinary life. She rose to her feet with a start--frightened yet satisfied--for here was something which had happened, if not the something for which she looked. But Lilias’ eyes enlarged to twice their size, and her heart gave a great jump, when she saw that the figure standing beside her was that of the old woman whom she had met in the Chase. ’Lizabeth had come up unobserved from the water-side. She was dressed exactly as she had been when Lilias saw her before, with the hood of her grey cloak over her white cap--a stately figure, notwithstanding the homely dress. Lilias gave a cry at the sight, and ran to her. “Oh, old woman!” she cried--“oh, I want to ask you--I want to ask you so many things.” “Honeysweet!” said ’Lizabeth, with a glow in her dark eyes. She did not for the moment think either of what she had come to say, or of the risk that attended her communications with her daughter’s child. She thought only of the face she saw reflected in that other face, and of the secret property she had in the child who was so beautiful and so sweet. This was ’Lizabeth’s heiress, the inheritor of the beauty which the old woman had been conscious of in her own person, and still more conscious of in the person of her daughter. Lilias was the third in that fair line. Pride filled the old woman’s heart, along with the warm gush of tenderness. No one had ever looked at Lilias with such passionate love and admiration. She did not venture to take the child into her arms as she had done in the solitude of the woods, but she looked at her with all her heart in her eyes.