ling black velvet gown and her embroidered long-drooping sleeves of
rose-coloured damask, were slightly faded, but they conveyed to the
initiated eye the satisfactory assurance that they were the splendid
result of six months' labour by a skilled workman; and the rose-coloured
petticoat, with its dimmed white fringe and seed-pearl arabesques, was
duly exhibited in order to suggest a similar pleasing reflection. A
handsome coral rosary hung from one side of an inferential belt, which
emerged into certainty with a large clasp of silver wrought in niello;
and, on the other side, where the belt again became inferential, hung a
scarsella, or large purse, of crimson velvet, stitched with pearls. Her
little fat right-hand, which looked as if it had been made of paste, and
had risen out of shape under partial baking, held a small book of
devotions, also splendid with velvet, pearls, and silver.

The figure was already too familiar to Tito to be startling, for Monna
Brigida was a frequent visitor at Bardo's, being excepted from the
sentence of banishment passed on feminine triviality, on the ground of
her cousinship to his dead wife and her early care for Romola, who now
looked round at her with an affectionate smile, and rose to draw the
leather seat to a due distance from her father's chair, that the coming
gush of talk might not be too near his ear.

"_La cugina_?" said Bardo, interrogatively, detecting the short steps
and the sweeping drapery.

"Yes, it is your cousin," said Monna Brigida, in an alert voice, raising
her fingers smilingly at Tito, and then lifting up her face to be kissed
by Romola. "Always the troublesome cousin breaking in on your wisdom,"
she went on, seating herself and beginning to fan herself with the white
veil hanging over her arm. "Well, well; if I didn't bring you some news
of the world now and then, I do believe you'd forget there was anything
in life but these mouldy ancients, who want sprinkling with holy water
if all I hear about them is true. Not but what the world is bad enough
nowadays, for the scandals that turn up under one's nose at every
corner--_I_ don't want to hear and see such things, but one can't go
about with one's head in a bag; and it was only yesterday--well, well,
you needn't burst out at me, Bardo, I'm not going to tell anything; if
I'm not as wise as the three kings, I know how many legs go into one
boot. But, nevertheless, Florence is a wicked city--is it not true,
M