She did not feel the smallest wish to hurt the woman who had injured her, let that be said in her praise; for though vengeance be the Lord's, to long for it is human. She only desired to be out of the house, and out of sight of the face that lay where her father's had lain, and beyond reach of the voice that had told her what she wished she had never known.
But there was no escape and she had to bear it; and when the night wore away at last, it had been the longest she remembered in all her life. Her face was as white as the Mother Superior's and her dark blue eyes looked almost black; even Madame Bernard would not have recognised the bright-haired Angela of other days in the weary and sad-faced nun who met the doctor outside the door of the sick-room when he came at eight o'clock.
She told him that the patient had been delirious about midnight, but had rested tolerably ever since. He glanced at the temperature chart she brought him and then looked keenly at her face and frowned.
'What is the matter with all of you White Sisters?' he growled discontentedly. 'First they send me one who cannot stay over night, and then they send me one who has not been to bed for a week and ought to stay there for a month! When did you leave your last case?'
'Yesterday morning,' answered Sister Giovanna submissively. 'I slept most of the afternoon. I am not tired and can do my work very well, I assure you.'
'Oh, you can, can you?' The excellent man glared at her savagely through his spectacles. 'You cannot say anything yourself, of course, but I shall go to your hospital to-day and give your Mother Superior such a scolding as she never had in her life! She ought to be ashamed to send out a nurse in your worn-out condition!'
'I felt quite fresh and rested when I left the Convent in the evening,' said the Sister in answer. 'It is not the Mother Superior's fault.'
'It is!' retorted the doctor, who could not bear contradiction. 'She ought to know better, and I shall tell her so. Go home at once, Sister, and go to bed and stay there!'
'I am quite able to work,' protested Sister Giovanna quietly. 'There is nothing the matter with me.'
The nun meekly opened her mouth and put out her little tongue: it was as pink as a rose-leaf. The doctor grunted, grabbed her wrist and began to count the pulse. Presently he made another inarticulate noise, as if he were both annoyed and pleased at having been mistaken.