In humouring my mistake, Miss

Havisham, you punished - practised on - perhaps you will supply

whatever term expresses your intention, without offence - your

self-seeking relations?"

"I did. Why, they would have it so! So would you. What has been my

history, that I should be at the pains of entreating either them,

or you, not to have it so! You made your own snares. I never made

them."

Waiting until she was quiet again - for this, too, flashed out of

her in a wild and sudden way - I went on.

"I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss

Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to

London. I know them to have been as honestly under my delusion as I

myself. And I should be false and base if I did not tell you,

whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are inclined

to give credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr. Matthew

Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be otherwise

than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything designing

or mean."

"They are your friends," said Miss Havisham.

"They made themselves my friends," said I, "when they supposed me

to have superseded them; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and

Mistress Camilla, were not my friends, I think."

This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see,

to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little

while, and then said quietly:

"What do you want for them?"

"Only," said I, "that you would not confound them with the others.

They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the

same nature."

Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated:

"What do you want for them?"

"I am not so cunning, you see," I said, in answer, conscious that I

reddened a little, "as that I could hide from you, even if I

desired, that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would

spare the money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life,

but which from the nature of the case must be done without his

knowledge, I could show you how."

"Why must it be done without his knowledge?" she asked, settling

her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more

attentively.

"Because," said I, "I began the service myself, more than two years

ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. Why I

fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part of

the secret which is another person's and not mine."

She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on the

fire. After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by the

light of the slowly wasting candles to be a long time, she was

roused by the collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards

me again - at first, vacantly - then, with a gradually

concentrating attention. All this time, Estella knitted on. When

Miss Havisham had fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as

if there had been no lapse in our dialogue:

"What else?"

"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my

trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I have loved

you long and dearly."

She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her

fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved

countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and

from her to me.

"I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It

induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another.

While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I

refrained from saying it. But I must say it now."

Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still

going, Estella shook her head.

"I know," said I, in answer to that action; "I know. I have no hope

that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may

become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go.