His reproach had been taken away ; he was crowned among his kindred with the beauty and blessing of sacred yesterdays . When the singing ceased Malcolm 's stern-faced son reached over and shook Robert 's hands . `` Uncle Rob , '' he said heartily , `` I hope that when I 'm sixty I 'll be as successful a man as you . '' `` I guess , '' said Aunt Isabel , aside to the little school teacher , as she wiped the tears from her keen old eyes , `` that there 's a kind of failure that 's the best success . '' VII . THE RETURN OF HESTER Just at dusk , that evening , I had gone upstairs and put on my muslin gown . I had been busy all day attending to the strawberry preserving -- for Mary Sloane could not be trusted with that -- and I was a little tired , and thought it was hardly worth while to change my dress , especially since there was nobody to see or care , since Hester was gone . Mary Sloane did not count . But I did it because Hester would have cared if she had been here . She always liked to see me neat and dainty . So , although I was tired and sick at heart , I put on my pale blue muslin and dressed my hair . At first I did my hair up in a way I had always liked ; but had seldom worn , because Hester had disapproved of it . It became me ; but I suddenly felt as if it were disloyal to her , so I took the puffs down again and arranged my hair in the plain , old-fashioned way she had liked . My hair , though it had a good many gray threads in it , was thick and long and brown still ; but that did not matter -- nothing mattered since Hester was dead and I had sent Hugh Blair away for the second time . The Newbridge people all wondered why I had not put on mourning for Hester . I did not tell them it was because Hester had asked me not to . Hester had never approved of mourning ; she said that if the heart did not mourn crape would not mend matters ; and if it did there was no need of the external trappings of woe . She told me calmly , the night before she died , to go on wearing my pretty dresses just as I had always worn them , and to make no difference in my outward life because of her going . `` I know there will be a difference in your inward life , '' she said wistfully . And oh , there was !
But sometimes I wondered uneasily , feeling almost conscience-stricken , whether it were wholly XXXXX Hester had left me -- whether it were no partly because , for a second time , I had shut the door of my heart in the face of love at her bidding .
At among as because if in on since that with