#Not the less however though with a tremulous enjoyment full#

#Not the less however though with a tremulous enjoyment full#

This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.

Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumour had long ago consigned him. Then why-since the choice was with himself-should the individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance arid proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship. Infamy was babbling around her in the public market-place. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. It has been related, how, in the crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people.

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had resolved should never more be spoken.