monitors, whose white robes, and wreaths, and red crosses, and dreadful candour, had something awful in their unusualness. Her Franciscan confessor, Fra Cristoforo, of Santa Croce, was not at hand to reinforce her distrust of Dominican teaching, and she was helplessly possessed and shaken by a vague sense that a supreme warning was come to her. Unvisited by the least suggestion of any other course that was open to her, she took the scarf that was held out, and rubbed her cheeks, with trembling submissiveness.
“It is well, madonna,” said the second youth. “It is a holy beginning. And when you have taken those vanities from your head, the dew of heavenly grace will descend on it.”
The infusion of mischief was getting stronger, and putting his hand to one of the jewelled pins that fastened her braids to the biretta, he drew it out. The heavy black plait fell down over Monna Brigida’s face, and dragged the rest of the headgear forward.
It was a new reason for not hesitating: she put up her hands hastily, undid the other fastenings, and flung down into the basket of doom her beloved crimson-velvet biretta, with all its unsurpassed embroidery of seed-pearls, and stood an unrouged woman, with grey hair pushed backward from a face where certain deep lines of age had triumphed over embonpoint.
But the biretta was not allowed to lie in the basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted it, and held it up pitilessly, with the false hair dangling.
“See, venerable mother,” said the taller youth, “what ugly lies you have delivered yourself from! And now you look like the blessed Saint Anna, the mother of the Holy Virgin.”
Thoughts of going into a convent forthwith, and never showing herself in the world again, were rushing through Monna Brigida’s mind. There was nothing possible for her but to take care of her soul.