Romola was too deeply moved by the main events which she had known before coming to Florence, to be wrought upon by the doubtful gossiping details added in Brigida’s narrative.
The tragedy of her husband’s death, of Fra Girolamo’s confession of duplicity under the coercion of torture, left her hardly any power of apprehending minor circumstances.
All the mental activity she could exert under that load of awestricken grief, was absorbed by two purposes which must supersede every other; to try and see Savonarola, and to learn what had become of Tessa and the children.
“Tell me, cousin,” she said abruptly, when Monna Brigida’s tongue had run quite away from troubles into projects of Romola’s living with her, “has anything been seen or said since Tito’s death of a young woman with two little children?”
Brigida started, rounded her eyes, and lifted up her hands.
“Cristo! no. What! was he so bad as that, my poor child? Ah, then, that was why you went away, and left me word only that you went of your own free will. Well, well; if I’d known that, I shouldn’t have thought you so strange and flighty. For I did say to myself, though I didn’t tell anybody else, ‘What was she to go away from her husband for, leaving him to mischief, only because they cut poor Bernardo’s head off? She’s got her father’s temper,’ I said, ‘that’s what it is.’ Well, well; never scold me, child: Bardo was fierce, you can’t deny it. But if you had only told me the truth, that there was a young hussey and children, I should have understood it all. Anything seen or said of her? No; and the less the better. They say enough of ill about him without that. But since that was the reason you