Then, gasping for breath,
did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively
endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture
inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's baby-hand. Again,
as if her mother's agonised gesture were meant only to make
sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile.
From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had
never felt a moment's safety: not a moment's calm enjoyment of
her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which
Pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter;
but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of
sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd
expression of the eyes.
Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes while
Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond
of doing; and suddenly for women in solitude, and with troubled
hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions she fancied
that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another
face in the small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face,
fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of
features that she had known full well, though seldom with a
smile, and never with malice in them.
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