Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/213

 hands for it." He loaded her with work, which she cheerfully accepted, and boasted to his colleagues about her, predicting that she would do great things.

She was graduated with honors which would have turned the head of one not so well poised. She did hospital work in Chicago for two years, and then went abroad for four more of supplementary training among the horrors of hospitals in great European cities. When she returned to her own country and established herself in New York, her fame had preceded her. Dr. Elizabeth Van Nest promptly took a place in the front rank of her profession, and enhanced the reputation already acquired by a series of brilliant operations. One of these was performed in Chicago, and while the newspapers were still full of the marvel of it, for the case was an unusual one and the patient a woman of national fame, the surgeon slipped away, leaving no address except in the patient's home.

"The convent again, I suppose," Dr. Lincoln reflected, dryly. "Hasn't she got over that habit yet? It is twelve years since she was graduated." Then his stern eyes softened. "If it's a weakness," he added, "it is her only one, and I wish she had more. She ought to have some strong human interest in her life."