Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/340

 go with you and inspect your Ousebridge, and you must come and give your opinion and advice upon our Roman college.’

‘A thousand thanks, dear countess, I will do the first at once. I will bring him to-morrow, if that will suit.’

A mild and sunny 8th of December saw a concourse of some fifty thousand persons gathered on the open space near Westminster Abbey. The inauguration of a new religious era had been opened in the forenoon with the celebration of high mass by the first ordained priestess, assisted by the Pope himself and the British Legate, a ceremony which virtually surrendered the chief priest’s office into woman’s hands. It was followed by the reception into the Church, by the same priestess, of the twelve girls, and their investiture with the order and insignia of vestals. But the crowning ceremony was to be the afternoon pontifical vespers, to be concluded with a solemn procession round the interior of the church, in honour of the Definition of the Dogma. Each vestal had her special colour assigned, the robe and train-mantilla being of white cashmere, the apron and fillet of the special colour. To our heroine was awarded the marine blue of the Sea-born, as a special honour for the active part she had taken in the cause. Friga, as the next in honour, had the colour of her University, blood-red crimson; a third had the green of spring, a fourth gold-yellow, and so on, a single colour being worn with the white by each vestal.

The procession was originally intended to go round the interior of the church merely, a choir of young girls in white leading it and singing the revised Litany of Our Lady, the vestals being seated on thrones borne aloft on the shoulders of the bishops, some eighty of whom had come to the cumenical Council; the train-mantilla of each vestal being