Hagar knew quite well what she was doing. She was going to read a book which, if her course were known, she would be forbidden to read. It had happened before now that she had read books under the ban of Gilead Balm. But heretofore she had always been able to say that she had not known that they were so, had not known she was doing wrong. That could not be said in this case. Aunt Serena had distinctly told her that Charles Darwin was a wicked and irreligious man, and that no lady would read his books.... But then Aunt Serena had unsparingly condemned other books which Hagar's mind yet refused to condemn. She had condemned "The Scarlet Letter." When Gilead Balm discovered Hagar at the last page of that book, there had ensued a family discussion. Miss Serena said that she blushed when she thought of the things that Hagar was learning. The Colonel had not blushed, but he said that such books unsettled all received notions, and while he supported her he wasn't going to have Medway's child imbibing damned anarchical sentiments of any type. Old Miss said a number of things, most of which tended toward Maria. The latter had defended her daughter, but afterwards she told Hagar that in this world, even if you didn't think you were doing wrong, it made for all the happiness there seemed to be not to do what other people thought you ought not to do.... But Hagar didn't believe yet that there was anything wrong in reading "The Scarlet Letter." She had been passionately sorry for Hester, and she had felt--she did not know why--a kind of terrified pity for Mr. Dimmesdale, and she had loved little Pearl. She had intended asking her mother what the red-cloth letter that Hester Prynne wore meant, but it had gone out of her mind. The chapter she liked best was the one with little Pearl playing in the wood.... Perhaps Aunt Serena, having been mistaken about that book, was mistaken, too, about Charles Darwin.
Neither now nor later did she in any wise love the feel of wrong-doing. Forbidden fruit did not appeal to her merely because it was forbidden. But if there was no inner forbidding, if she truly doubted the justice or authority or abstract rightness of the restraining hand, she was capable of attaining the fruit whether forbidden or no. There was always the check of great native kindliness. If what she wanted to do was going--no matter how senselessly--to trouble or hurt other people's feelings, on the whole she wouldn't do it. In the case of this June day and the "Descent of Man" the library was empty. She only wanted to look at the pictures and to run over the reading enough to see what it was about--then she would put it back on the top shelf. She was not by nature indirect or secretive. She preferred to go straightforwardly, to act in the open. But if the wall of not-agreed-in objection stood too high and thick before her, she was capable of stealing forth in the dusk and seeking a way around it. Coiled now in the cool hollow of the sofa, half in and half out of the shaft of sunshine, she began to read.