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More lecturing, a long session of lecturing, followed this outburst. At the end of it the victim was meek and pliable, or so professed herself. For at least five days Brinnaria kept up her effort to be comradely with Meffia. By the sixth day she was completely exhausted and the two avoided each other as before.
There was but one drawback to life in the Atrium from Brinnaria's point of view. That drawback was Meffia. Meffia was never ill but never well. Everything tired her. It tired her to walk upstairs, to stand for any length of time, to do anything. She was forever sitting down to rest or lying down to rest. Excitement exhausted her totally. She was a perpetual worry to the other Vestals.
She fanned herself steadily as she watched the lanistas help Almo to hobble from the arena. When he was gone her attention returned to Meffia. Gargilia and Numisia were trying to rouse her. She remained crumpled, she collapsed, she slid off her chair to the floor of the box. She lay in a horrid heap unmistakable in its limpness. The excitement had been too much for Meffia. She was stone dead.
She went under and did not come up. For an instant Brinnaria thought she was shamming to scare her; but, in a twinkling she realized that Meffia had fainted. Promptly she plunged in and rescued her victim.
It was quite a delicate art to lay the necessary piece in just the right place and at just the right angle; it required more than a little good sense and discretion to know just when a piece was required, for the fire must not burn violently nor must it smoulder, it must be steady but not strong. This discretion, this good sense, Meffia was slow to acquire.
Causidiena, tactful and sympathetic, solved the problem of how to influence her by getting her to watch Meffia and to contrast her with Manlia and Gargilia. They were almost as statuesque as their two elders, who reclined at table in attitudes scarcely less majestic than those of the Fates on the Parthenon pediment.
First she made sure that none of the maids would suffer for their duplicity and partiality; then she confessed. The Chief Vestal was not wrathful, not even stern. She talked mildly and gently, yet made Brinnaria feel very much ashamed of herself and acutely penitent. The end of the interview was that Causidiena said: "You are such a robust child that you do not realize how frail Meffia is.
They were seated not according to seniority, but Numisia in the middle, Meffia and Brinnaria, as the youngest, on either side of her, Gargilia next Meffia, and Manlia next Brinnaria.
It so happened that Causidiena first questioned some of the maid-servants, who all hated Meffia and liked Brinnaria. Therefore the ones interrogated told a story as much at variance with the facts as they saw fit. Brinnaria, after she was again dry-clad, quaked inwardly in anticipation of Causidiena's wrath and suffered a good deal more at the thought of her pained, silent displeasure.
She felt among the wood piled ready, found a slender sliver of a cleft branchlet, and methodically ploughed the ashes across and across. She did bring to the surface a faint redness, but not even one coal which could have been blown into sufficient heat to start a flame on her splinter of dry maple. A sound assailed her ears. Meffia snoring!
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