of the Bleeding Heart.
They came in turn, in bands of six or eight; and stayed three months
at a time. In the other House, under the care of an English physician,
nurses were hired without reference to their religion. As soon as
Hetty's house was all in order, and her shrubs and trees set out,
she went one morning to this House, and asked to see the physician in
charge. With characteristic brevity, she stated that she had come to
St. Mary's to earn her living as a nurse, and would like to secure a
situation. The doctor looked at her scrutinizingly.

"Have you ever nursed?"

"No, sir."

"What do you know about it then?"

"I have seen a great many sick people."

"How was that?"

Hetty hesitated, but with some confusion replied:

"My husband was a doctor, and I often went with him to see his
patients."

"You are a widow then?"

"No, sir."

"What then?" said the physician, severely.

Poor Hetty! She rose to her feet; but, recollecting that she had no
right to be indignant, sat down, and replied in a trembling voice:

"I cannot tell you, sir, any thing about my trouble. I have come here to
live, and I want to be a nurse."

"Father Antoine knows me," she added, with dignity.

Father Antoine's name was a passport. Doctor Macgowan had often wished
that he could have all his nurses from the convent.

"You are a Catholic, then?" he said.

"No, indeed!" exclaimed Hetty, emphatically. "I am nothing of the sort."

"How is it that you mention Father Antoine, then?"

"He knew my father well, and me also, years ago; and he is the only
friend I have here."

Dr. Macgowan had an Englishman's instinctive dislike of unexplained
things and mysterious people. But Hetty's face and voice were better
than pedigrees and certificates. Her confident reference to Father
Antoine was also enough to allay any immediate uneasiness, and, "for
the rest, time will show," thought the doctor; and, without any farther
delay, he engaged Hetty as one of the day nurses in his establishment.
In after years Dr. Macgowan often looked back to this morning, and
thought, with the sort of shudder with which one looks back on a danger
barely escaped:

"Good God! what if I had let that woman go?"

All Hetty's native traits especially adapted her to the profession of
nursing; and her superb physical health was of itself a blessing to
every sick man or sick woman with whom she came in contact. Before she
had been in Dr. Macgowan's house one we