Donna Florinda and her pupil were quickly in the room.
"Prepare thy mind for the confessional," said the priest, placing himself with grave dignity in that chair which he habitually used when listening to the self-accusations and failings of his spiritual child.
The brow of Violetta paled and flushed again, as if there lay a heavy sin on her conscience.

She turned an imploring look on her maternal monitor, in whose mild features she met an encouraging smile, and then with a beating heart, though ill-collected for the solemn duty, but with a decision that the occasion required, she knelt on the cushion at the feet of the monk.
The murmured language of Donna Violetta was audible to none but him for whose paternal ear it was intended, and that dread Being whose just anger it was hoped it might lessen.

But Don Camillo gazed, through the half-opened door of the chapel, on the kneeling form, the clasped hands, and the uplifted countenance of the beautiful penitent.

As she proceeded with the acknowledgment of her errors, the flush on her cheek deepened, and a pious excitement kindled in those eyes which he had so lately seen glowing with a very different passion.

The ingenuous and disciplined soul of Violetta was not so quickly disburdened of its load of sin as that of the more practised mind of the Lord of Sant' Agata.