And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame!  But where was little Pearl?  If still alive she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood.  None knew—­nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty—­whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued and made capable of a woman’s gentle happiness.  But through the remainder of Hester’s life there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land.  Letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English heraldry.  In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased and affection have imagined for her.  There were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers at the impulse of a fond heart.  And once Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult had any infant thus apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed—­and Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, believed—­and one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes—­that Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside.

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home.  Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence.  She had returned, therefore, and resumed—­of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it—­resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale.  Never afterwards did it quit her bosom.  But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too.  And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble.  Women, more especially—­in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion—­or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy!  Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might.  She assured them, too, of her firm belief