would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and
sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on
proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly
safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness; it passed, as
suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt
like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the
process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should
control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real
comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was
sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;
until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath
her opening lids--little Pearl awoke!

How soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed!--did Pearl arrive at an
age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's
ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would
it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like
voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have
distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the
entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never
be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil,
emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants.
Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with
which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had
drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in
short, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since her
release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In
all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as the babe
in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her
mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along
at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the
children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at
the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion
as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church,
perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight
with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative
witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make
acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If