All I possess

is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to

have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give

you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do

impossibilities."

"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 grey

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?"

Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low

moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer.

"Or," said Estella, " - which is a nearer case - if you had taught

her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and

might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was

made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn

against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her; - if

you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take

naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have

been disappointed and angry?"

Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not see

her face), but still made no answer.

"So," said Estella, "I must be taken as I have been made. The

success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together

make me."

Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, upon the floor,

among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn.