"Did I never give her love!" cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me.

"Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all

times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me

mad, let her call me mad!"

"Why should I call you mad," returned Estella, "I, of all people? Does

any one live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as well as I

do? Does any one live, who knows what a steady memory you have, half

as well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth on the little stool

that is even now beside you there, learning your lessons and looking up

into your face, when your face was strange and frightened me!"

"Soon forgotten!" moaned Miss Havisham. "Times soon forgotten!"

"No, not forgotten," retorted Estella,--"not forgotten, but treasured up

in my memory. When have you found me false to your teaching? When have

you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me giving

admission here," she touched her bosom with her hand, "to anything that

you excluded? Be just to me."

"So proud, so proud!" moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her gray hair

with both her hands.

"Who taught me to be proud?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when I

learnt my lesson?"

"So hard, so hard!" moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.

"Who taught me to be hard?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when I

learnt my lesson?"

"But to be proud and hard to me!" Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as she

stretched out her arms. "Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud and hard

to me!"

Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but was

not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she looked down at

the fire again.

"I cannot think," said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence "why

you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a separation.

I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I have never been

unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have never shown any weakness

that I can charge myself with."

"Would it be weakness to return my love?" exclaimed Miss Havisham. "But

yes, yes, she would call it so!"

"I begin to think," said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment

of calm wonder, "that I almost understand how this comes about. If you

had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of

these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as

the daylight by which she had never once seen your face,--if you had

done that, and then, for a purpose had wanted her to understand the

daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and

angry?"




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