The churchman told her that if she could learn to nurse the sick, she might accomplish both ends.
He never suggested that she should become a nun, or take upon herself any permanent obligation.

He had seen much of human nature; the girl was very young, and perhaps he underrated the strength of her love for the dead man, and thought that she might yet marry happily and live a normal woman's life.

But there was no reason why she should not become a trained nurse in the meantime, and there was room for her in the nuns' hospital of Saint Joan of Aza, an institution which owes its first beginnings and much of its present success to the protection of the Saracinesca family, and more 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.