brutal manner, and sidling and hacking
I thought he was gone, when he came
calling for a Iight for the cigar in his mouth,
which he had forgotten. A man in a dust-
coloured dress appeared with what was wanted—
I could not have said from where: whether
from the inn, or the street, or where not—
and as Drummle leaned down from the saddle
and lighted his cigar and laughed, with a jerk of
his head towards the coffee-room windows, the
slouching shoulders and ragged hair of this
man, whose back was towards me, reminded me
of Orlick.

Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the
time whether it were he or no, or after all to
touch the breakfast, I washed the weather and
the journey from my face and hands, and went
out to the memorable old house that it would
have been so much the better for me never to
have entered, never to have seen.

CHAPTER XLIV.

IN the room where the dressing-table stood
and where the wax candles burnt on the wall, I
found Miss Havisham and Estella; Miss
Havisham seated on a settee near the fire, and Estella
on a cushion at her feet. Estella was knitting,
and Miss Havisham was looking on. They both
raised their eyes as I went in, and both saw an
alteration in me. I derived that, from the look
they interchanged.

"And what wind," said Miss Havisham,
"blows you here, Pip?:''

Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that
she was rather confused. Estella, pausing for a
moment in her knitting with her eyes upon me,
and then going on, I fancied that I read in the
action of her fingers, as plainly as if she had told
me in the dumb alphabet, that she perceived I
had discovered my real benefactor.

"Miss Havisham," said I, "I went to
Richmond to speak to Estella; and finding
that some wind had blown her here, I followed."

Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third
or fourth time to sit down, I took the chair by
the dressing-table which I had often seen her
occupy. With all that ruin at my feet and about
me, it seemed a natural place for me, that day.

"What I had to say to Estella, Miss
Havisham, I will say before you, presently—in a
few moments. It will not surprise you, it will
not displease you. I am as unhappy as you can
ever have meant me to be."

Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at
me. I could see in the action of Estella's
fingers as they worked, that she attended to what
I said; but she did not look up.

"I have found out who my patron is. It is not
a fortunate discovery, and is not likely ever to
enrich me in reputation, station, fortune, anything.
There are reasons why I must say no more of
that. It is not my secret, but another's."

As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella
and considering how to go on, Miss Havisham
repeated, "It is not your secret, but another's.
Well?"

"When you first caused me to be brought
here, Miss Havisham; when I belonged to
the village over yonder that I wish I had
never left; I suppose I did really come here,
as any other chance boy might have come—as
a kind of servant, to gratify a want or a whim,
and to be paid for it?"

"Ay, Pip," replied Miss Havisham, steadily
nodding her head; "you did."

"And that Mr. Jaggers—"

"Mr. Jaggers," said Miss Havisham, taking
me up in a firm tone, "had nothing to do with
it, and knew nothing of it. His being my
lawyer, and his being the lawyer of your patron,
is a coincidence. He holds the same relation
towards numbers of people, and it might easily
arise. Be that as it may, it did arise, and was
not brought about by any one."

Any one might have seen in her haggard face
that there was no suppression or evasion so far.

"But when I fell into the mistake I have so
long remained in, at least you led me on?"
said I.

"Yes," she returned, again nodding steadily,
"I let you go on."

"Was that kind?"

"Who am I," cried Miss Havisham, striking
her stick upon the floor and flashing into wrath
so suddenly that Estella glanced up at her in
surprise, "who am I, for God's sake, that I
should be kind!"

It was a weak complaint to have made, and I
had not meant to make it. I told her so, as she
sat brooding after this outburst.

"Well, well, well!" she said. "What else?"

"I was liberally paid for my old attendance
here," said I, to soothe her, "in being apprenticed,
and I have asked these questions only for
my own information. What follows has another
(and I hope more disinterested) purpose. 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," said she. "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 honestlv 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,