ge is crowded with personages who have little connection
with each other. There was much which she herself did not care to
remember, but much more that no one else need ever know; and as she
had never before been delirious, nor even ill, the thought that she
had now perhaps revealed incidents of her past life was anything but
pleasant.

'It is so very disagreeable to think that I may have talked nonsense,'
she said to the doctor, examining one of her white hands thoughtfully.

'Do not disturb yourself about that,' he answered in a reassuring
tone, for he understood much better than she guessed. 'A good trained
nurse is as silent about such accidental confessions as a good priest
is about intentional ones.'

'Confession!' cried the Princess, annoyed. 'As if I were concealing a
crime! I only mean that I probably said very silly things. By the bye,
I had several nurses, had I not? You kept changing them. Do you happen
to know who that Sister Giovanna was, who looked so ill? You sent her
back after two days, I think, because you thought she might break
down. She reminded me of a niece of mine whom I have not seen for
years, but I did not like to ask her any questions, and besides, I was
much too ill.'

'I have no idea who she was before she entered the order,' the doctor
answered.

He was often asked such futile questions about nurses, and would not
have answered them if he had been able to do so. But in asking
information the Princess was unwittingly conveying it, for it flashed
upon him that Sister Giovanna was perhaps indeed that niece of whom
she spoke, and whom she was commonly said to have defrauded of her
fortune; the nun herself had told him of the sick woman's delirious
condition, and he remembered her looks and her admission that she was
in mental distress. All this tallied very well with the guess that her
aunt had made some sort of confession of her deed while her mind was
wandering, and that she now dimly recalled something of the sort. He
put the theory away for future consideration, and left the Princess in
ignorance that he had thought of it or had even attached any special
meaning to her words.

She was far from satisfied, however, and made up her mind to follow up
the truth at all costs. As a first step, she sent a generous donation
to the Convent of the White Sisters, as soon as she was quite
recovered; and as her illness had not been serious enough to explain
such an important thank-offering, she