In a new place, where she can start again, Ethel has far more chance of happiness than in re-enacting her own version of The Scarlet Letter in Downton.
Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER-the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh.
Taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered.
Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter.
Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared that individual, of singular aspect whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter.
She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known of it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter.