rong affections! She loves me, and will love thee!"

"Thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside at Hester
Prynne, "how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it! But,
in truth, as I already told thee, children are not readily won to be
familiar with me. They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear,
nor answer to my smile; but stand apart, and eye me strangely. Even
little babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl,
twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me! The first
time,--thou knowest it well! The last was when thou ledst her with
thee to the house of yonder stern old Governor."

"And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!" answered the
mother. "I remember it; and so shall little Pearl. Fear nothing! She
may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!"

By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on
the farther side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman, who
still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk, waiting to receive her.
Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool, so smooth
and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with
all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of
flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than
the reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living Pearl,
seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible
quality to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearl
stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the
forest-gloom; herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of
sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In
the brook beneath stood another child,--another and the same,--with
likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some
indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl; as if the
child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the
sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly
seeking to return to it.

There was both truth and error in the impression; the child and
mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not Pearl's. Since
the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted
within the circle of the mother's feelings, and so modified the aspect
of them all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer, could not find her
wonted place,