Great Expectations

"It is not easy for even you." said Estella, "to know what satisfaction

it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an enjoyable sense of

the ridiculous I have when they are made ridiculous. For you were not

brought up in that strange house from a mere baby. I was. You had not

your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed

and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what not that

is soft and soothing. I had. You did not gradually open your round

childish eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a

woman who calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up

in the night. I did."

It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she summoning these

remembrances from any shallow place. I would not have been the cause of

that look of hers for all my expectations in a heap.

"Two things I can tell you," said Estella. "First, notwithstanding the

proverb that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you may set

your mind at rest that these people never will--never would, in hundred

years--impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any particular, great

or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the cause of their being so

busy and so mean in vain, and there is my hand upon it."

As she gave it to me playfully,--for her darker mood had been but

Momentary,--I held it and put it to my lips. "You ridiculous boy," said

Estella, "will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand in the

same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?"

"What spirit was that?" said I.

"I must think a moment. A spirit of contempt for the fawners and

plotters."

"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?"

"You should have asked before you touched the hand. But, yes, if you

like."

I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue's. "Now," said

Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, "you are to take

care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to Richmond."

Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced upon

us, and we were mere puppets, gave me pain; but everything in our

intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to be,

I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on

against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it

always was.