The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 17 Page 13

But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man! — the physician! — he whom they call Roger Chillingworth! — he was my husband!”

The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of passion, which — intermixed in more shapes than one with his higher, purer, softer qualities — was, in fact, the portion of him which the devil claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest.

Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle.