to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress,
that had been dug out of a vault under the
church pavement. Now, wax-work and skeleton
seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked
at me. I should have cried out, if I could.

"VVho is it"' said the lady at the table.

"Pip, ma'am."

"Pip?"

"Mr. Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come—
to play."

"Come nearer; let me look at you. Come
close."

It was when I stood before her, avoiding her
eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects
in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at
twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the
room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "You
are not afraid of a woman who has never seen
the sun since you were born?"

I regret to state that I was not afraid of
telling the enormous lie comprehended in the
answer "No."

"Do you know what I touch here?" she said,
laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left
side.

"Yes, ma'am." (It made me think of the
young man.)

"What do I touch?"

"Your heart."

"Broken!"

She uttered the word with an eager look, and
with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile
that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards, she
kept her hands there for a little while, and
slowly took them away as if they were heavy.

"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want
diversion, and I have done with men and women.
Play."

I think it will be conceded by my most
disputatious reader, that she could hardly have
directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in
the wide world more difficult to be done under
the circumstances.

"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went
on, "and I have a sick fancy that I want to see
some play. There, there!" with an impatient
movement of the fingers of her right hand;
"play, play, play!"

For a moment, with the fear of my sister's
working me before my eyes, I had a desperate
idea of starting round the room in the assumed
character of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart.
But, I felt myself so unequal to the performance
that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss
Havisham in what I suppose she took for a
dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when we
had taken a good look at each other:

"Are you sullen and obstinate?"

"No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and
very sorry I can't play just now. If you
complain of me I shall get into trouble with my
sister, so I would do it if I could; but it's so
new here, and so strange, and so fine and
melancholy——" I stopped, fearing I might say
too much, or had already said it, and we took
another look at each other.

Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes
from me, and looked at the dress she wore, and
at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in
the looking-glass.

"So new to him," she muttered, "so old to
me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so
melancholy to both of us! Call Estella."

As she was still looking at the reflexion of
herself, I thought she was still talking to
herself, and kept quiet.

"Call Estella," she repeated, flashing a look
at me. "You can do that. Call Estella. At
the door."

To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage
of an unknown house, bawling Estella to a scornful
young lady neither visible nor responsive,
and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out
her name, was almost as bad as playing to order.
But, she answered at last, and her light came
along the long dark passage like a star.

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close,
and took up a jewel from the table, and tried its
effect upon her fair young bosom and against
her pretty brown hair. "Your own, one day,
my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see
you play cards with this boy."

"With this boy! Why, he is a common
labouring-boy!"

I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer
—only it seemed so unlikely—"Well? You
can break his heart."

"What do you play, boy?" asked Estella of
myself, with the greatest disdain.

"Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss."

"Beggar him," said Miss Havisham to
Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that
everything in the room had stopped, like the watch
and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that
Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on
the spot from which she had taken it up. As
Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-
table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once
white, now yellow, had never been worn. I
glanced down at the foot from which the shoe
was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on
it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden
ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this
standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not
even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed
form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or
the long veil so like a shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at
cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal
dress looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing
then, of the discoveries that are occasionally
made of bodies buried in ancient times, which
fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly
seen; but, I have often thought since, that she
must have looked as if the admission of the
natural light of day would have struck her to
dust.

"He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!" said
Estella with disdain, before our first game was
out. "And what coarse hands he has. And what
thick boots!"

I had never thought of being ashamed of my