It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse,
sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow
of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning at such
moments whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an
airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a
little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a
mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright,
deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and
intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and
might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not
whence and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was
constrained to rush towards the child--to pursue the little elf
in the flight which she invariably began--to snatch her to her
bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses--not so much from
overflowing love as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and
blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was
caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more
doubtful than before.
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Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so
often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had
bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes
burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps--for there was no
foreseeing how it might affect her--Pearl would frown, and
clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a
stern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom she would
laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and
unintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this more rarely
happened--she would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob out
her love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent on
proving that she had a heart by breaking it. Yet Hester was
hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness: it
passed as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters,
the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some
irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win
the master-word that should control this new and
incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was when
the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of
her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;
until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from
beneath her opening lids--little Pearl awoke!
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