Great Expectations

And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air upon him

of general lying by in consequence of information he possessed, that

really was too much for me. He cross-examined his very wine when he had

nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and the candle, tasted

the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it, looked at his

glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, filled again, and

cross-examined the glass again, until I was as nervous as if I had known

the wine to be telling him something to my disadvantage. Three or four

times I feebly thought I would start conversation; but whenever he saw

me going to ask him anything, he looked at me with his glass in his

hand, and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as if requesting me to

take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn't answer.

I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved her

in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing off her

cap,--which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin mop,--and

strewing the ground with her hair,--which assuredly had never grown

on her head. She did not appear when we afterwards went up to Miss

Havisham's room, and we four played at whist. In the interval, Miss

Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of the most beautiful jewels

from her dressing-table into Estella's hair, and about her bosom and

arms; and I saw even my guardian look at her from under his thick

eyebrows, and raise them a little, when her loveliness was before him,

with those rich flushes of glitter and color in it.

Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into custody, and

came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, before which the

glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say nothing; nor, of

the feeling that I had, respecting his looking upon us personally in the

light of three very obvious and poor riddles that he had found out long

ago. What I suffered from, was the incompatibility between his cold

presence and my feelings towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could

never bear to speak to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to

hear him creak his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see

him wash his hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be within

a foot or two of him,--it was, that my feelings should be in the same

place with him,--that, was the agonizing circumstance.