she
had seen. Instead of oil-paintings, it was hung round with colourless
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 l