What does Hester realize about her "repentance"? In Chapter 15.

Hester realizes that she should have cast off her punishment...... that she'd spent seven long years under a punishment that hadn't wrought repentance.

But Hester ought long ago to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of misery, and wrought out no repentance?