--"Thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with
him, under the same roof!"
The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and
clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his
bosom.
"Ha! What sayest thou?" cried he. "An enemy! And under mine
own roof! What mean you?"
Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for
which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him
to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at
the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than
malevolent. The very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever
mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the
magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale.
There had been a period when Hester was less alive to this
consideration; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own
trouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture to
herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the night
of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both
softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more
accurately. She doubted not that the continual presence of Roger
Chillingworth--the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all
the air about him--and his authorised interference, as a
physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual
infirmities--that these bad opportunities had been turned to a
cruel purpose.
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