Great Expectations

Nevertheless, I knew, while I said those words, that I secretly intended

to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for her sake.

Yes, even so. For Estella's sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being

separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, and who

had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice, brutality,

and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her husband, from an

accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse. This release had

befallen her some two years before; for anything I knew, she was married

again.

The early dinner hour at Joe's, left me abundance of time, without

hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before dark.

But, what with loitering on the way to look at old objects and to think

of old times, the day had quite declined when I came to the place.

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but the

wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed with a rough

fence, and looking over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had struck

root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin. A gate in

the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open, and went in.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not yet

up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist, and the

moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could trace out where

every part of the old house had been, and where the brewery had been,

and where the gates, and where the casks. I had done so, and was looking

along the desolate garden walk, when I beheld a solitary figure in it.

The figure showed itself aware of me, as I advanced. It had been moving

towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw it to be the

figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was about to turn away, when

it stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it faltered, as if much

surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried out,-"Estella!"

"I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me."

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable

majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attractions in it,

I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was the saddened,

softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had never felt before was

the friendly touch of the once insensible hand.