ore particularly to the Princess herself,
the beautiful Donna Corona of other days, and to her second son,
Monsignor Ippolito. The hospital was always in need of young nurses,
especially since a good many of the older ones were going to the Far
East, and when there was a choice the Mother Superior gave the
preference to applicants from the better classes.

The matter was therefore settled without difficulty, and Angela was
soon installed in the tiny room which remained her cell for years
afterwards. It contained a narrow iron bedstead, and during the day a
small brass cross always lay on the white coverlet; there was a chest
of drawers, a minute table on which stood an American nickeled alarum
clock; there was one rush-bottomed chair, and the only window looked
westwards over the low city wall towards Monteverde, where the powder
magazine used to stand before it was blown up. The window was latticed
half-way up, which did not hinder Angela from seeing the view when she
had time to look at it.

She wore a plain grey frock at first, but when she was in the wards it
was quite covered by the wide white cotton garment which all the
nurses wore when on duty. Occasionally Madame Bernard came and took
her for a walk, and sometimes she went out on an errand with one of
the nuns; but she did not care very much for that, possibly because
she was not under any restraint. The beautiful enclosed garden was
wide and sunny, and she could generally be alone there; when the
weather was fine she could wander about between the beds of roses and
carnations or sit on a bench, and if it rained she could walk up and
down under the cloisters. The three old nuns who came out to sun
themselves paid no attention to her, beyond nodding rather shakily
when she bent her head to them in respectful salutation. They had seen
more than a hundred girls enter the convent, to work and grow old like
themselves, and one more neither made any difference to them nor
possessed for them the least interest. That strange petrifaction had
begun in them which overtakes all very old monks and nuns who have
never had very active minds. From doing the same things, with no
appreciable variation, at the same hours for fifty, sixty, and even
seventy years, they become so perfectly mechanical that their bodies
are always in one of a limited number of attitudes, less and less
pronounced as great age advances, till they at last cease to move at
all and die, as the hands of