CHAPTER VI. Pearl.

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant, that little creature whose innocent life had

sprung by the inscrutable decree of providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank

of luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman as she watched

the growth and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that

threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child.

Her pearl. For so had Hester called her, not as a name expressive of her aspect, which

had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned luster that would be indicated by the comparison,

but she named the infant Pearl as being of great price, purchased with all she had, her mother's

only treasure. How strange indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter,

which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save

it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which

man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored

bosom to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally

a blessed soul in heaven. Yet these thoughts affected Hester print less with hope than apprehension.

She knew that her deed had been evil. She could have no faith, therefore, that its result

would be good. Day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever

dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness

to which she owed her being. Certainly there is no physical defect. By its perfect shape

it's vigor and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant

was worthy to have been brought forth and eaten, worthy to have been left there to be the

plaything of the angels after the world's first parents were driven out. The child had

...