By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and
stood on the further side, gazing silently at Hester and the
clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk
waiting to receive her. Just where she had paused, the brook
chanced to form a pool so smooth and quiet that it reflected a
perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant
picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and
wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the
reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living Pearl,
seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible
quality to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which
Pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim
medium of the forest gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified
with a ray of sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a
certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood another
child--another and the same--with likewise its ray of golden
light. Hester felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing
manner, estranged from Pearl, as if the child, in her lonely
ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in
which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly
seeking to return to it.
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There were both truth and error in the impression; the child and
mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not Pearl's.
Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been
admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and so
modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning
wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where
she was.
"I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, "that
this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou
canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit,
who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to
cross a running stream? Pray hasten her, for this delay has
already imparted a tremor to my nerves."
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