ost 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 "Napoleon 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-a-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 or three fall, and then resolutely drove the others
back.

"What shall I do?" she thought, and joined to her own terrors there was
now the certainty of the anxiety and misery the others must, by this
time, be suffering on her account. "Oh, poor litt