Nearly all the day she sat, poor little saint! by her window looking out at the passers-by in the snowy street.  But she scarcely saw the people at all, her thoughts were far away, in the little village where she had always spent her Christmas before.  Her Aunt Clotilde had allowed her at such times to do so much.  There had not been a house she had not carried some gift to; not a child who had been forgotten.  And the church on Christmas morning had been so beautiful with flowers from the hot-houses of the chateau.  It was for the church, indeed, that the conservatories were chiefly kept up.  Mademoiselle de Rochemont would scarcely have permitted herself such luxuries.

But there would not be flowers this year, the chateau was closed; there were no longer gardeners at work, the church would be bare and cold, the people would have no gifts, there would be no pleasure in the little peasants’ faces.  Little Saint Elizabeth wrung her slight hands together in her lap.

“Oh,” she cried, “what can I do?  And then there is the poor here—­so many.  And I do nothing.  The Saints will be angry; they will not intercede for me.  I shall be lost!”

It was not alone the poor she had left in her village who were a grief to her.  As she drove through the streets she saw now and then haggard faces; and when she had questioned a servant who had one day come to her to ask for charity for a poor child at the door, she had found that in parts of this great, bright city which she had not seen, there was said to be cruel want and suffering, as in all great cities.

“And it is so cold now,” she thought, “with the snow on the ground.”

The lamps in the street were just beginning to be lighted when her Uncle Bertrand returned.  It appeared that he had brought back with him the gentleman with the kind face.  They were to dine together, and Uncle Bertrand desired that Mademoiselle Elizabeth should join them.  Evidently the journey out of town had been delayed for a day at least.  There came also another message:  Monsieur de Rochemont wished Mademoiselle to send to him by her maid a certain box of antique ornaments which had been given to her by her Aunt Clotilde.  Elizabeth had known less of the value of these jewels than of their beauty.  She knew they were beautiful, and that they had belonged to her Aunt Clotilde in the gay days of her triumphs as a beauty and a brilliant and adored young woman, but it seemed that they were also very curious, and Monsieur de Rochemont wished his friend to see them.  When Elizabeth went downstairs she found them examining them together.

“They must be put somewhere for safe keeping,” Uncle Bertrand was saying.  “It should have been done before.  I will attend to it.”

The gentleman with the kind eyes looked at Elizabeth with an interested expression as she came into the room.  Her slender little figure in its black velvet dress, her delicate little face with its large soft sad eyes, the gentle gravity of her manner made her seem quite unlike other children.