Great Expectations

Putting Miss Havisham's note in my pocket, that it might serve as

my credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in case her

waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I went

down again by the coach next day. But I alighted at the Halfway House,

and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of the distance; for I sought

to get into the town quietly by the unfrequented ways, and to leave it

in the same manner.

The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet echoing

courts behind the High Street. The nooks of ruin where the old monks had

once had their refectories and gardens, and where the strong walls were

now pressed into the service of humble sheds and stables, were almost

as silent as the old monks in their graves. The cathedral chimes had at

once a sadder and a more remote sound to me, as I hurried on avoiding

observation, than they had ever had before; so, the swell of the old

organ was borne to my ears like funeral music; and the rooks, as they

hovered about the gray tower and swung in the bare high trees of the

priory garden, seemed to call to me that the place was changed, and that

Estella was gone out of it for ever.

An elderly woman, whom I had seen before as one of the servants who

lived in the supplementary house across the back courtyard, opened the

gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark passage within, as of old,

and I took it up and ascended the staircase alone. Miss Havisham was not

in her own room, but was in the larger room across the landing. Looking

in at the door, after knocking in vain, I saw her sitting on the hearth

in a ragged chair, close before, and lost in the contemplation of, the

ashy fire.

Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood touching the old

chimney-piece, where she could see me when she raised her eyes. There

was an air or utter loneliness upon her, that would have moved me to

pity though she had wilfully done me a deeper injury than I could charge

her with. As I stood compassionating her, and thinking how, in the

progress of time, I too had come to be a part of the wrecked fortunes of

that house, her eyes rested on me. She stared, and said in a low voice,

"Is it real?"

"It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have lost

no time."