Grandmother Dear | Page 9

engravings.
Here, too, there were several people standing about, but none whom,
even for an instant, Sylvia could have mistaken for her friends.
"How quickly they must have hurried on," she thought, her heart
beginning to beat faster. "I do think they might have waited a little.
They must have missed me by now."
No use delaying in this room. Sylvia hurried on, finding herself now in

that part of the palace devoted to ancient pottery and other antiquities,
uninteresting to a child. The rooms through which she passed were
much less crowded than those containing pictures. At a glance it was
easy to distinguish that those she was in search of were not there. Still
she tried to keep up heart.
"There is nothing here they would much care about," she said to herself.
"If I could get back to the picture rooms I should be sure to find them."
At last, to her delight, after crossing a second vestibule, from which
descended a great staircase which she fancied she had seen before, she
entered another of the long galleries completely hung with paintings.
She bounded forward joyously.
"They're sure to be here," she said.
The room was very crowded. She dared not rush through it as fast as
hitherto; it was so crowded that she felt it would be quite possible to
overlook a group of even four. More than once she fancied she caught
sight of grandmother's small and aunty's taller figure, both dressed in
black. Once her heart gave a great throb of delight when she fancied
she distinguished through the crowd the cream-coloured felt hat and
feathers of Molly, her double. But no--it was a cream-coloured felt hat,
but the face below it was not Molly's. Then at last a panic seized the
poor little girl. She fairly lost her head, and the tears blinding her so,
that had Molly and all of them been close beside her, she could scarcely
have perceived them, she ran half frantically through the rooms. Half
frantically in reality, but scarcely so to outward appearance. Her habit
of self-control, her unconquerable British dislike to being seen in tears,
or to making herself conspicuous, prevented her distress being so
visible as to attract general attention. Some few people remarked her as
she passed--a forlorn little Evangeline--her pretty face now paler, now
more flushed than its wont, as alternations of hope and fear succeeded
each other, and wondered if she had lost her party or her way. But she
had disappeared before there was time to do more than notice her. More
than once she was on the point of asking help or advice from the
cocked-hat officials at the doors, but she was afraid. In some ways she
was very ignorant and childish for her age, notwithstanding her little

womanlinesses and almost precocious good sense, and to tell the truth,
a vague misty terror was haunting her brain--a terror which she would
hardly have confessed to Molly, not for worlds untold to Ralph--that,
being in France and not in England, she might somehow be put in
prison, were the state of the case known to these same cocked-hat
gentlemen! So, when at last one of these dignitaries, who had been
noticing her rapid progress down the long gallery "Napoléon III.,"
stopped her with the civil inquiry, "Had Mademoiselle lost her way?
was she seeking some one?" she bit her lips tight and winked her eyes
briskly not to cry, as she replied in her best French, "Oh no," she could
find her way. And then, as a sudden thought struck her that possibly he
had been deputed by grandmother and aunty, who must have missed
her by now, to look for her, she glanced up at him again with the
inquiry, had he, perhaps, seen a little girl like her? just like her?
[Illustration: SYLVIA LOST IN THE LOUVRE.]
"Une petite fille comme Mademoiselle?" replied the man smiling, but
not taking in the sense of the question. "No, he had not." How could
there be two little demoiselles, "tout-à-fait pareilles?" He shook his
head, good-natured but mystified, and Sylvia, getting frightened again,
thanked him and sped off anew.
The next doorway--by this time she had unconsciously in her panic and
confusion begun actually to retrace her steps round the main court of
the palace--brought her again into a room filled with statuary and
antiquities. She was getting so tired, so out of breath, that the
excitement now deserted her. She sat down on the ledge of one of the
great marble vases, in a corner where her little figure was almost
hidden from sight, and began to think, as quietly and composedly as
she could, what she should do. The tears were slowly creeping up into
her eyes again; she let two