当那年轻的妇女——就是婴儿的母亲——全身位立在人群面前时,她的第一个冲动似乎就是把孩子抱在胸前;她这么做与其说是出于母爱的激情,不如说可以借此掩盖钉在她衣裙上的标记。然而,她很快就醒悟过来了,用她的耻辱的一个标记来掩盖另一个标记是无济于事的,于是,索兴用一条胳膊架着孩子,她虽然面孔红得发烧,却露出高傲的微笑,用毫无愧色的目光环视着她的同镇居民和街坊邻里。她的裙袍的前胸上露出了一个用红色细布做就、周围用金丝线精心绣成奇巧花边的一个字母A。这个字母制作别致,体现了丰富面华美的匠心,佩在衣服上构成尽美尽善的装饰,而她的衣服把她那年月的情趣衬托得恰到好处,只是其艳丽程度大大超出了殖民地俭补标准的规定。
The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundanthair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressivenessbelonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the femininegentilityof those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmedand obscured by a disastrouscloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a haloof the misfortune and ignominyin which she was enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitelypainful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessnessof her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfiguredthe wearer- so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time- was that SCARLETLETTER, so fantastically embroideredand illuminatedupon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphereby herself.
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