At Sydney Hospital, which was less than a mile from Elizabeth Bay as the southerly blows, though rather more than that if one is required to follow the circuitous route taken by the meandering roads, Miss Verity Trent dressed herself, a little painfully, stopping once or twice to catch her breath.

Her time at the hospital was at an end, her place soon to be taken by another. Someone more deserving, certain of the nursing staff thought privately and some not so privately; the reason for Miss Trent’s illness was generally known and those among them who believed in Sin and Wickedness did not bother to hide their judgement as they tended to her, and those who believed in Charity and Forgiveness did not judge at all and offered kindness with their ministrations and, oddly, both factions read the same Book and considered themselves of the same faith. Fortunately, their faith was broad enough to encompass both schools of thought.

Miss Trent’s time on the ward, her time in the colony, had not been a pleasant one. She was relieved to be going. She dressed herself painfully but she did not ask for help and none was offered.

The government had decreed the day a holiday and the city’s cab drivers had included themselves within the spirit of this decree so that Eleanor had a great deal of trouble finding a hansom to take her to Macquarie Street. When she did locate one the driver was garrulous and full of opinions that he was inclined to share with her, though mercifully a stiff breeze off the water whipped his words away as soon as he uttered them and Eleanor was spared.

Was she spared?

The cab drew up now before the front steps of the hospital and Eleanor climbed down, needing the man’s hand as she descended but dismissing him at once when she no longer had need of him.

She did not go up the steps. Instead, she made her way around to the rear where the hospital buildings merged with the great and sweeping expanse of the Domain. Here the romantic whimsy of the place, which elsewhere was held in check, erupted with unrestrained abandon in the form of a delightful if incongruous three-storey turret better suited to a medieval castle than a colonial hospital. This piece of architectural caprice housed the hospital’s modern and new operating theatre on its uppermost floor, the elegantly proportioned Chapel of St Luke in its middle floor, and at ground level, accessed by a small and insignificant green door, the morgue.

‘Please mind your head!’ cried a young clerk starting up in alarm as Eleanor appeared in the doorway.