Hester saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that
group of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the
prison-door seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only
compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since made.
At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the
burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more
remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more
painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on.
While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the
cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for
ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred
pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to
his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of
the scarlet letter in the marketplace! What imagination would
have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching
stigma was on them both!
XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER
The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience
had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at
length came to a pause.
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