"Oh! How could it be? It all exactly fits in with Mercy's story, and the tall, fair lady was in deep mourning too."
"She wouldn't still be in mourning," said Linda; "it's fifteen years since Mercy was lost."
"She might be; perhaps she made up her mind never to wear anything else until she found her. Shall I tell Mercy?"
"No, I'm sure you had better not. Miss Kaye said we were none of us ever to mention it to her."
"Then I must find out a little more, and it will come as a surprise to her in the end. Don't breathe a word to any of the other girls; I want it to be a dead secret. Nobody knows a hint about it except you and me."
Sylvia felt almost bursting with the importance of her quest; her great anxiety now was to meet the lady again and make a few further discoveries. She wished she knew her name, or where she lived, and much regretted that she had not taken the opportunity of saying something about Mercy at the time.
"It would be so dreadful if I didn't get a chance to see her any more," she thought. "Perhaps she's only a visitor at Aberglyn, and she may go home without anything happening after all."
Every day, when they went for their walk, she looked out both for the tall, fair lady and the short, fat one, but she never saw either, though she managed to persuade Miss Coleman to take them twice again to the promenade, an unheard-of indulgence in one week.
"I don't know what we're to do!" she lamented to Linda. "I must see her somehow. I feel as if Mercy's future depends upon it. She looks nice too. I wonder how Mercy will like her for a mother. Just think of having to get to know your own mother when you're sixteen! Wouldn't it seem queer? Perhaps she may be in church on Sunday."
"I don't see how you could speak to her even if she were," said Linda. "We go out by the side door, and you wouldn't be likely to meet her in the churchyard."