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Chapter 16. A Forest Walk.

Hester Prince remained constant and her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale

at whatever risk of present pain or all terrier consequences,

the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy.

For several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing him in some of the

meditative walks, which she knew him to be in the habit of taking,

along the shores of the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighboring country.

There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame

had she visited him in his own study. Where many, penitent, air now,

had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a die as the one betokened by the scarlet letter.

But partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old Roger chilling-worth,

and partly that her conscious heart imputed suspicion where none could have been felt,

and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in

while they talked together. For all these reasons, Hester never thought of meeting him in any

narrower privacy than beneath the open sky. At last, while attending in a sick chamber,

whether the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer,

she learnt that he had gone the day before to visit the Apostle Elliot,

among his Indian converts. He would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon of the

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