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Updated: June 15, 2025
"For Heaven's sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!" whispered his sister. "They think you mad." "Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah!" returned her brother. "No matter what they think! I am not mad. For the first time in thirty years my thoughts gush up and find words ready for them. I must talk, and I will!" He turned again towards the old gentleman, and renewed the conversation.
Take your purse, with money in it, and come along!" Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else were to be done or thought of. She began to wonder, it is true, why she did not wake up, and at what still more intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble her spirit would struggle out of the maze, and make her conscious that nothing of all this had actually happened.
They evidently considered themselves not merely her equals, but her patrons and superiors. Now, Hepzibah had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there would be a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person, which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or, at least, a tacit recognition of it.
But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought the humming-birds along with it. A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor.
All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world! Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one. It is the ticking of the Judge's watch, which, ever since Hepzibah left the room in search of Clifford, he has been holding in his hand.
No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly white, and, staggering towards Phoebe, let her head fall on the young girl's shoulder. "O Phoebe!" murmured she, "that man has been the horror of my life! Shall I never, never have the courage, will my voice never cease from trembling long enough to let me tell him what he is?" "Is he so very wicked?" asked Phoebe.
But Holgrave detained her a little longer. "Miss Hepzibah tells me," observed he, "that you return to the country in a few days." "Yes, but only for a little while," answered Phoebe; "for I look upon this as my present home. I go to make a few arrangements, and to take a more deliberate leave of my mother and friends.
She was indistinctly aware, however, that the gaunt figure of the old gentlewoman was sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs, a little withdrawn from the window, the faint gleam of which showed the blanched paleness of her cheek, turned sideways towards a corner. "Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?" she asked. "Do, if you please, my dear child," answered Hepzibah.
In "The House of the Seven Gables" Hawthorne attained a connection of parts and a masterly gradation of tones which did not belong, in the same fulness, to "The Scarlet Letter." There is, besides, a larger range of character, in this second work, and a much more nicely detailed and reticulated portrayal of the individuals. Hepzibah is a painting on ivory, yet with all the warmth of a real being.
Let us leave the old house to our cousin Jaffrey! He will take good care of it!" Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak, a garment of long ago, in which he had constantly muffled himself during these days of easterly storm. He beckoned with his hand, and intimated, so far as she could comprehend him, his purpose that they should go together from the house.
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