VI.  PEARL

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant that little creature,whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree ofProvidence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rankluxuriance of a guilty passion.  How strange it seemed to the sadwoman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that becameevery day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw itsquivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child!  HerPearl--for so had Hester called her; not as a name expressiveof her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white,unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison.But she named the infant"Pearl," as being of great price--purchasedwith all she had--her mother's only treasure!  Howstrange, indeed!  Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarletletter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that nohuman 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 samedishonoured bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the raceand descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul inheaven!  Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hopethan apprehension.  She knew that her deedhad been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that itsresult would be good.  Day after day she looked fearfully intothe child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some darkand wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltinessto 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 itsuntried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forthin Eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything ofthe angels after the world's first parents were driven out.  Thechild had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist withfaultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressedthe beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became itbest.  But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds.  Hermother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understoodhereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured,and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in thearrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child worebefore the public eye.  So magnificent was the small figure whenthus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl's own properbeauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might haveextinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolutecircle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor.  A