So Hester learned from the sweetness
of Amy, as Amy from the unbending principle of Hester.
She at last made up her mind that she would take Cornelius home without
giving her father the opportunity of saying he should not come. She
would presume that he must go home after such an illness: the result she
would wait! The meeting could in no case be a happy one, but if he were
not altogether repulsed, if the mean devil in him was not thoroughly
roused by the harshness of his father, she would think much had been
gained!
With gentle watchfulness she regarded Amy, and was more and more
satisfied that, whatever might be wrong, she had had a share in it not
as one who did, but as one who endured wrong. The sweetness and devotion
with which she seemed to live only for her husband was to Hester, who
found it impossible to take such a position even in imagination towards
Gartley, in her tenderer moments almost a rebuke. But she could not
believe that had Amy known before she married him what kind of person
Cornelius was, she would have given herself to him. She did not think
how nearly the man she had once accepted stood on the same level of
manhood.
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