"Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a

looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know

what I had done. What have I done! What have I done!" And so again,

twenty, fifty times over, What had she done!

"Miss Havisham," I said, when her cry had died away, "you may dismiss me

from your mind and conscience. But Estella is a different case, and if

you can ever undo any scrap of what you have done amiss in keeping a

part of her right nature away from her, it will be better to do that

than to bemoan the past through a hundred years."

"Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip--my dear!" There was an earnest womanly

compassion for me in her new affection. "My dear! Believe this: when she

first came to me, I meant to save her from misery like my own. At first,

I meant no more."

"Well, well!" said I. "I hope so."

"But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did

worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings,

and with this figure of myself always before her, a warning to back and

point my lessons, I stole her heart away, and put ice in its place."

"Better," I could not help saying, "to have left her a natural heart,

even to be bruised or broken."

With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while, and then

burst out again, What had she done!

"If you knew all my story," she pleaded, "you would have some compassion

for me and a better understanding of me."

"Miss Havisham," I answered, as delicately as I could, "I believe I may

say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since I first left

this neighborhood. It has inspired me with great commiseration, and I

hope I understand it and its influences. Does what has passed between us

give me any excuse for asking you a question relative to Estella? Not as

she is, but as she was when she first came here?"

She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, and

her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said this, and

replied, "Go on."

"Whose child was Estella?"

She shook her head.

"You don't know?"




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