of this little girl, had assigned to Hester’s charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties.  Everything was against her.  The world was hostile.  The child’s own nature had something wrong in it which continually betokened that she had been born amiss—­the effluence of her mother’s lawless passion—­and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all.

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood.  Was existence worth accepting even to the happiest among them?  As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled.  A tendency to speculation, though it may keep women quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad.  She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her.  As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down and built up anew.  Then the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position.  Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change, in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated.  A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought.  They are not to be solved, or only in one way.  If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish.  Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm.  There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere.  At times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to Heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide.

The scarlet letter had not done its office.  Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment.  She had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle.  She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it.  It was impossible to doubt that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief.  A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus