“And what of him?” cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant.  “Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman.  So speak freely and I will make answer.”

“When we last spake together,” said Hester, “now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me.  As the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent in accordance with your behest.  Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for, having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something whispered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel.  Since that day no man is so near to him as you.  You tread behind his every footstep.  You are beside him, sleeping and waking.  You search his thoughts.  You burrow and rankle in his heart!  Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not.  In permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!”

“What choice had you?” asked Roger Chillingworth.  “My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!”

“It had been better so!” said Hester Prynne.

“What evil have I done the man?” asked Roger Chillingworth again.  “I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest!  But for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine.  For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter.  Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret!  But enough.  What art can do, I have exhausted on him.  That he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!”

“Better he had died at once!” said Hester Prynne.

“Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!” cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes.  “Better had he died at once!  Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered.  And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy!  He has been conscious of me.  He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse.  He knew, by some spiritual sense—­for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this—­he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it.  But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine!  With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given