But she named
the infant "Pearl," as being of great price--purchased with all
she had--her mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man
had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such
potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could
reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a
lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonoured bosom, to
connect her parent for ever with the race and descent of
mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these
thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than
apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could
have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day
after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding
nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity
that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her
being.
Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,
its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its
untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth
in Eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything of
the angels after the world's first parents were driven out.
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