orward.

"Ah! we have seen each other before," said Romola, smiling, and coming
forward. "I am glad it was _your_ little boy. He was crying in the
street; I suppose he had run away. So we walked together a little way,
and then he knew where he was, and brought me here. But you had not
missed him? That is well, else you would have been frightened."

The shock of finding that Lillo had run away overcame every other
feeling in Tessa for the moment. Her colour went again, and, seizing
Lillo's arm, she ran with him to Monna Lisa, saying, with a half sob,
loud in the old woman's ear--

"Oh, Lisa, you are wicked! Why will you stand with your back to the
door? Lillo ran away ever so far into the street."

"Holy Mother!" said Monna Lisa, in her meek, thick tone, letting the
spoon fall from her hands. "Where were _you_, then? I thought you were
there, and had your eye on him."

"But you _know_ I go to sleep when I am rocking," said Tessa, in pettish
remonstrance.

"Well, well, we must keep the outer door shut, or else tie him up," said
Monna Lisa, "for he'll be as cunning as Satan before long, and that's
the holy truth. But how came he back, then?"

This question recalled Tessa to the consciousness of Romola's presence.
Without answering, she turned towards her, blushing and timid again, and
Monna Lisa's eyes followed her movement. The old woman made a low
reverence, and said--

"Doubtless the most noble lady brought him back." Then, advancing a
little nearer to Romola, she added, "It's my shame for him to have been
found with only his shirt on; but he kicked, and wouldn't have his other
clothes on this morning, and the mother, poor thing, will never hear of
his being beaten. But what's an old woman to do without a stick when
the lad's legs get so strong? Let your nobleness look at his legs."

Lillo, conscious that his legs were in question, pulled his shirt up a
little higher, and looked down at their olive roundness with a
dispassionate and curious air. Romola laughed, and stooped to give him
a caressing shake and a kiss, and this action helped the reassurance
that Tessa had already gathered from Monna Lisa's address to Romola.
For when Naldo had been told about the adventure at the Carnival, and
Tessa had asked him who the heavenly lady that had come just when she
was wanted, and had vanished so soon, was likely to be--whether she
could be the Holy Madonna herself?--he had answered, "Not exactly, my