Great Expectations

"Do you want me then," said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and

serious, if not angry, look, "to deceive and entrap you?"

"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?"

"Yes, and many others,--all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley. I'll

say no more."

And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so filled my

heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass on unhindered,

to the event that had impended over me longer yet; the event that had

begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the world held Estella,

and in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving its first

distortions from Miss Havisham's wasting hands.

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of

state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the

tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through

the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof,

the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to

the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labor, and the hour

come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened

axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his

hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and

the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that

tended to the end, had been accomplished; and in an instant the blow was

struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.