I must talk in my own way. How do you thrive
with Mr. Pocket?"

"I live quite pleasantly there; at least"

It appeared to me that I was losing a chance.

"At least?" repeated Estella.

"As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away
from you."

"You silly boy," said Estella, quite composedly,
"how can you talk such nonsense?
Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior
to the rest of his family?"

"Very superior indeed. He is nobody's
enemy"

"Don't add but his own," interposed Estella,
"for I hate that class of man. But he really is
disinterested, and above small jealousy and spite,
I have heard?"

"I am sure I have every reason to say so."

"You have not every reason to say so of the
rest of his people," said Estella, nodding at me
with an expression of face that was at once
grave and rallying, "for they beset Miss
Havisham with reports and insinuations to your
disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent
you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes),
and you are the torment and the occupation
of their lives. You can scarcely realise to
yourself the hatred those people feel for you."

"They do me no harm, I hope?" said I.

Instead of answering, Estella burst out
laughing. This was very singular to me, and I
looked at her in considerable perplexity. When
she left off and she had not laughed languidly
but with real enjoyment I said, in my diffident
way with her, "I hope I may suppose that you
would not be amused if they did me any harm."

"No, no, you may be sure of that," said
Estella. "You may be certain that I laugh
because they fail. Oh, those people with Miss
Havisham, and the tortures they undergo!"
She laughed again, and even now when she had
told me why, her laughter was very singular to me,
for I could not doubt its being genuine, and yet
it seemed too much for the occasion. I thought
there must really be something more here than I
knew; she saw the thought in my mind, and
answered it.

"It is not easy for even you," said Estella,
"to know what satisfaction it gives me to see
those people thwarted, or what an enjoyable
sense of the ridiculous I have when they are
made ridiculous. For you were not brought up
in that strange house from a mere baby. I was.
You had not your little wits sharpened by their
intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless,
under the mask of sympathy and pity and
what not that is soft and soothing. I had. You
did not gradually open your round childish eyes
wider and wider to the discovery of that
impostor of a woman who calculates her stores of
peace of mind for when she wakes up in the
night. I did."

It was no laughing matter with Estella now,
nor was she summoning these remembrances
from any shallow place. I would not have been
the cause of that look of hers, for all my
expectations in a heap.

"Two things I can tell you," said Estella.
"First, notwithstanding the proverb that constant
dropping will wear away a stone, you may
set your mind at rest that these people never
will—never would, in a hundred years impair
your ground with Miss Havisham, in any
particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden
to you as the cause of their being so busy
and so mean in vain, and there is my hand upon
it."

As she gave it me playfully—for her darker
mood had been but momentary—I held it and
put it to my lips. " You ridiculous boy," said
Estella, " will you never take warning? Or do
you kiss my hand in the spirit in which I once
let you kiss my cheek?"

"What was it?" said I.

"I must think a moment. A spirit of
contempt for the fawners and plotters."

"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?"

"You should have asked before you touched
the hand. But, yes, if you like."

I leaned down, and her calm face was like a
statue's. "Now," said Estella, gliding away
the instant I touched her cheek, " you are to
take care that I have some tea, and you are to
take me to Richmond."

Her reverting to this tone as if our association
were forced upon us and we were mere
puppets, gave me pain; but everything in
our intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone
with me happened to be, I could put no trust in
it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went
on against trust and against hope. Why
repeat it a thousand times? So it always was.

I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing
with his magic clue, brought in by degrees
some fifty adjuncts to that refreshment, but of
tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups and saucers,
plates, knives and forks (including carvers),
spoons (various), salt-cellars, a meek little muffin
confined with the utmost precaution under a
strong iron cover, Moses in the bullrushes
typified by a soft bit of butter in a quantity of
parsley, a pale loaf with a powdered head, two
proof impressions of the bars of the kitchen
fireplace on triangular bits of bread, and ultimately
a fat family urn: which the waiter staggered
in with, expressing in his countenance
burden and suffering. After a prolonged absence
at this stage of the entertainment, he at length
came back with a casket of precious appearance
containing twigs. These I steeped in hot water,
and so from the whole of these appliances
extracted one cup of I don't know what, for
Estella.

The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and
the ostler not forgotten, and the chambermaid
taken into consideration—in a word, the whole
house bribed into a state of contempt and
animosity, and Estella's purse much lightened—we
got into our post-coach and drove away. Turning
into Cheapside and rattling up Newgate
street, we were soon under the walls of which I
was so ashamed.

"What place is that?" Estella asked me.

I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognising