in the morning, white and tear-stained, and had told Stella that she
could stay no longer, kissed her, and was gone out of the house
before even Charles could be called. Stella's anxiety, almost
despair, had however been relieved just before her brother's arrival
by an electric message from Vale Leston with the words, "Angela safe
at home."

Letters followed, and told how Robina had found her sobbing upon her
brother Felix's grave. Her explanation was, that on the very night
before her proposed betrothal, she had dreamt that she was drifting
down the Ewe in the little boat Miss Ullin, and saw Felix under the
willow-tree holding out his bared arms to her. She said, "Is that
the scar of the scald?" and his only answer was the call "Angela!
Angela!" and with the voice still sounding in her ears, she awoke,
and determined instantly to obey the call, coming to her, as she
felt, from another world. If it were only from her own conscience,
still it was a cause of great thankfulness to her family, and she
soon made herself very valuable at Vale Leston in a course of
epidemics which ran through the village, and were in some cases very
severe. The doctors declared that two of the little Vanderkists owed
their lives to her unremitting care.

Her destiny seemed to be fixed, and she went off radiant to be
trained at a London hospital as a nurse. Her faculty in that line
was undoubted. All the men in her ward were devoted to her, and so
were almost all the young doctors; but the matron did not like her,
and at the end of the three years, an act of independent treatment of
a patient caused a tremendous commotion, all the greater because many
outsiders declared that she was right. But it almost led to a
general expulsion of lady nurses.