His
sad, pock-marked face had a torturing fascination for her. It was almost
pure pain, yet she could not turn her eyes from it. She reproached
herself that it gave her pain, yet was almost indignant with the face
she saw for usurping the place of her boy's beauty: through that mask
she must force her way to the real beneath it! At the same time very
pity made her love with a new and deeper tenderness the poor spoilt
visage, pathetic in its ugliness. Not a word did she utter of reproach:
his father would do--was doing enough for both in that way! Every few
minutes she would gaze intently in his face for a moment, and then clasp
him to her heart as if seeking a shorter way to his presence than
through the ruined door of his countenance.
Hester, who had never received from her half so much show of tenderness,
could not help, like the elder brother in the divine tale, a little
choking at the sight, but she soon consoled herself that the less poor
Corney deserved it the more he needed it. The worst of it to Hester was
that she could not with any confidence look on the prodigal as a
repentant one; and if he was not, all this tenderness, she feared and
with reason, would do him harm, causing him to think less of his crime,
and blinding him to his low moral condition.
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