She has graduated, been a governess to 4 Belgium children for 5 years, returned home to nurse her father through an illness and will tell you her favourite stanza is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which says ‘Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us footprints on the sands of time’.

That was then the makeup of Edith Cavell a young women whose special nature actually beckoned the hand of fate.