"It shall be thought of later," said Uncle Bertrand. "I am too busy now.
Be reasonable, my child, and run away. You detain me."
He left her with a slight impatient shrug of his shoulders and the slight amused smile on his lips. She heard him speak to his friend.
"She was brought up by one who had renounced the world," he said, "and she has already renounced it herself—pauvre petite enfant! At eleven years she wishes to devote her fortune to the poor and herself to the Church."
Elizabeth sank back into the shadow of the portières. Great burning tears filled her eyes and slipped down her cheeks, falling upon her breast.
"He does not care," she said; "he does not know. And I do no one good—no one." And she covered her face with her hands and stood sobbing all alone.
When she returned to her room she was so pale that her maid looked at her anxiously, and spoke of it afterwards to the other servants. They were all fond of Mademoiselle Elizabeth. She was always kind and gentle to everybody.
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 château. 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 château 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.