"what shall I do?"

She walked a long way--so long that she was very tired--and offered them
at several places, but as she chanced to enter only respectable shops,
the same thing happened each time. She was looked at curiously and
questioned, but no one would buy.

"They are mine," she would say. "It is right that I should sell them."
But everyone stared and seemed puzzled, and in the end refused.

At last, after much wandering, she found herself in a poorer quarter of
the city; the streets were narrower and dirtier, and the people began to
look squalid and wretchedly dressed; there were smaller shops and dingy
houses. She saw unkempt men and women and uncared for little children.
The poverty of the poor she had seen in her own village seemed comfort
and luxury by contrast. She had never dreamed of anything like this. Now
and then she felt faint with pain and horror. But she went on.

"They have no vineyards," she said to herself. "No trees and
flowers--it is all dreadful--there is nothing. They need help more than
the others. To let them suffer so, and not to give them charity, would
be a great crime."

She was so full of grief and excitement that she had ceased to notice how
everyone looked at her--she saw only the wretchedness, and dirt and
misery. She did not know, poor child! that she was surrounded by
danger--that she was not only in the midst of misery, but of dishonesty
and crime. She had even forgotten her timidity--that it was growing
late, and that she was far from home, and would not know how to
return--she did not realize that she had walked so far that she was
almost exhausted with fatigue.

She had brought with her all the money she possessed. If she could not
sell the jewels she could, at least, give something to someone in want.
But she did not know to whom she must give first. When she had lived with
her Aunt Clotilde it had been their habit to visit the peasants in their
houses. Must she enter one of these houses--these dreadful places with
the dark passages, from which she heard many times riotous voices, and
even cries, issuing?

"But those who do good must feel no fear," she thought. "It is only to
have courage." At length something happened which caused her to pause
before one of those places. She heard sounds of pitiful moans and sobbing
from something crouched upon the broken steps. It seemed like a heap of
rags, but as she drew near she saw by the light of the street lamp
opposite that