“Faltonius has the lists,” said Brinnaria wearily, “with all the birthdays sworn to by both parents for every girl on them and attested by four excellent witnesses, besides. He’d know I was lying and it would do me no good.” Flexinna changed the subject. But when the next day dawned and neither Brinnarius nor Almo appeared, she returned to the attack. Brinnaria was very pale, very tense, but obdurate. She controlled herself, did not forget, did not express her feelings, but she posted a slave at each street corner, right and left of the house-door, and had them look out for what she hoped and what she feared. Dastor brought word that the Pontifex and his retinue were approaching; three litters, each with eight bearers, preceded by the lictor of the Chief Vestal. Brinnaria, pale and tense, did her best to look collected and controlled. She succeeded well, heard calmly the announcement of her august visitors, ordered them shown into the atrium, and received them with proper dignity. Her self-possession did not desert her when she recognized in the train of the Pontifex her rejected suitor Calvaster, sly, malignant and with an air of suppressed elation. Faltonius Bambilio, the Pontifex of Vesta, was a pursy, pudgy, pompous old man, immensely self-important, almost ridiculous in his fussiness, but clothed with a certain impressiveness by the mere fact of his religious office. He gazed about him, stared at Brinnaria, hemmed and hawed and threw himself into poses intended to be stately. With him was Causidiena, now Chief Vestal, a tall, spare woman of about forty-five, her austere face kindly and reassuring, her dark hair barely showing under her official head-dress, a statuesque figure in her white robes of office. “My daughter,” spoke Faltonius to Brinnaria, “Rome has but five Vestals. I have come to take you into the vacant place. You have been chosen, as best suited to this high dignity, from among those whose names were on the lists of those fit for the office. Was it proper that your name should be on the lists?” “I believe so,” spoke Brinnaria, weakly, almost in a whisper. “Are you fit to be taken as a Vestal, my daughter?” “I believe so,” came the answer. “Have you any blemish or defect of body, any impediment of speech, any difficulty of hearing?” Brinnaria’s awe was wearing off, and the irritating pomposity of Faltonius was producing its usual effect of arousing antagonism, as it generally did in those he talked to. Brinnaria felt all her wild self surge up in her. “I’m sound as a two-year-old racing filly,” she replied. “I’m clean as fresh curd; I hear you perfectly and you can hear me perfectly.” Bambilio bristled like a bantam rooster. “That is not the way for a Vestal to speak,” he rebuked. “I’m not a Vestal yet,” Brinnaria retorted, “and that was my answer to those questions. If you don’t like it I don’t care a shred of bran.” “Come! come!” fussed Bambilio, “answer the interrogatories properly.”