How soon — with what strange rapidity, indeed! — did Pearl arrive at an
age that was capable of social intercourse beyond the mother's
ever-ready smile and nonsense words! And then what a happiness would it
have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice
mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have
distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the
entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never
be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil,
emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants.
Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which
the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had drawn an
inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in short,
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