her the break-up of all her plans, the destruction of the standard of nursing which she was painfully creating, the gravest peril to an experiment, still on its trial, and ever subject to hostile criticism. Immediate and practical difficulties were also great. There was no accommodation in the hospitals at Scutari available for additional female nurses. "The 46," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to Mr. Smith (Dec. 18), "have fallen on us like a cloud of locusts. Where to house them, feed them, place them, is difficult; how to care for them, not to be imagined." The Principal Medical Officer flatly refused to have any more, and Miss Nightingale herself felt that she could not manage any more:-- "I have toiled my way," she wrote (Dec. 15), "into the confidence of the Medical Men. I have, by incessant vigilance, day and night, introduced something like system into the disorderly operations of these women. And the plan may be said to have succeeded in some measure, _as it stands_.... But to have women scampering about the wards of a Military Hospital all day long, which they would do, did an increased number relax the discipline and increase their leisure, would be as improper as absurd." And there was a further objection. A considerable number of the second party were Roman Catholics, and Miss Stanley herself (as Miss Nightingale well knew) was on the verge of joining the Roman Communion. How much this factor in the case added to the force of Miss Nightingale's objections, we shall learn in a later chapter. Mr. Herbert thought, I suppose, that the additional nurses would be welcome to her because they came under the escort of a friend. But so strongly did Miss Nightingale feel on the subject, that Miss Stanley's part in the affair rankled the more. It was in the house of her friends, she felt, that she had been wounded. Their personal relations were further embittered by the case of a nurse whom Miss Nightingale (with the concurrence of the other authorities) felt obliged to dismiss, but whom Miss Stanley believed to be ill-used. Miss Nightingale's friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Herbert was in no way impaired. They had confessed themselves in the wrong; and so she was deeply touched, as she wrote, by their kindness and generosity. But between her and Miss Stanley the breach was never healed. Their later lives took different directions, and they did not meet again.