Hester had a rather severe mode of speaking, especially to this brother,
which, if it had an end, failed of it. She was the only person in the
house who could ever have done any thing with him, and she lost her
advantage--let me use a figure--by shouting to him from a distance,
instead of coming close up to him and speaking in a whisper. But for
that she did not love him enough, neither was she yet calm enough in
herself to be able for it. I doubt much, however, if he would have been
in any degree permanently the better for the best she could have done
for him. He was too self-satisfied for any redemption. He was afraid of
his father, resented the interference of his mother, was as cross as he
pleased with his sister, and cared little whether she was vexed with him
or not. And he regarded the opinion of any girl, just because she was a
girl, too little to imagine any reflection on himself in the remark she
had just made.

While they talked he had been watching the clouds.

"Do go, Hester," he said. "I give you my word it will be a fine
evening."

She went to put on her hat and cloak, and presently they were in the
street.

It was one of those misty clearings in which sometimes the day seems to
gather up his careless skirts, that have been sweeping the patient,
half-drowned world, as he draws nigh the threshold of the waiting night.
There was a great lump of orange color half melted up in the watery
clouds of the west, but all was dreary and scarce consolable, up to the
clear spaces above, stung with the steely stars that began to peep out
of the blue hope of heaven. Thither Hester kept casting up her eyes as