fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to
go out than to burn up, and the reluctant
smoke which hung in the room seemed colder
than the clearer air— like our own marsh mist.
Certain wintry branches of candles on the high
chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber: or
it would be more expressive to say, faintly
troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and
I dare say had once been handsome, but every
discernible thing in it was covered with dust
and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most
prominent object was along table with a tablecloth
spread on it, as if a feast had been in
preparation when the house and the clocks all
stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece
of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it
was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its
form was quite undistinguishable, and, as I
looked along the yellow expanse out of which I
remember its seeming to grow like a black
fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with
blotchy bodies running home to it, and running
out from it, as if some circumstance of the
greatest public importance had just transpired
in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the
panels, as if the same occurrence were
important to their interests. But, the black-beetles
took no notice of the agitation, and groped about
the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they
were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not
on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my
attention and I was watching them from a
distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon
my shoulder. In her other hand she had a
crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and
she looked like the Witch of the place.

"This," said she, pointing to the long table
with her stick, "is where I will be laid when I
am dead. They shall come and look at me
here."

With some vague misgiving that she might
get upon the table then and there and die at
once, the complete realisation of the ghastly
waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

"What do you think that is?" she asked me,
again pointing with her stick; "that, where those
cobwebs are?"

"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."

"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"

She looked all round the room in a glaring
manner, and then said, leaning on me while her
hand twitched my shoulder, "Come, come,
come! Walk me, walk me!"

I made out from this, that the work I had to
do, was to walk Miss Havisham round and
round the room. Accordingly, I started at
once, and she leaned upon my shoulder, and we
went away at a pace that might have been an
imitation (founded on my first impulse under
that roof) of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart.

She was not physically strong, and after
a little time she said " Slower!" Still, we
went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we
went, she twitched the hand upon my shoulder,
and worked her mouth, and led me to believe
that we were going fast because her thoughts
went fast. After a while she said, " Call
Estella!" so I went out on the landing and roared
that name as I had done on the previous occasion.
When her light appeared, I returned to
Miss Havisham, and we started away again
round and round the room.

If only Estella had come to be a spectator of
our proceedings, I should have felt sufficiently
discontented; but, as she brought with her the
three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen
below, I didn't know what to do. In my
politeness, I would have stopped; but, Miss
Havisham twitched my shoulder, and we posted on
with a shamefaced consciousness on my part
that they would think it was all my doing.

"Dear Miss Havisham," said Miss Sarah
Pocket. " How well you look!"

"I do not," returned Miss Havisham. "I am
yellow skin and bone."

Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met
with this rebuff; and she murmured, as she
plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, "Poor
dear soul! Certainly not to be expected to
look well, poor thing. The idea!"

"And how are you?" said Miss Havisham to
Camilla. As we were close to Camilla then, I
would have stopped as a matter of course, only
Miss Havisham wouldn't stop. We swept on,
and I felt that I was highly obnoxious to Camilla.

"Thank you, Miss Havisham," she returned,
"I am as well as can be expected."

"Why, what's the matter with you?" asked
Miss Havisham, with exceeding sharpness.

"Nothing worth mentioning," replied
Camilla. " I don't wish to make a display of my
feelings, but I have habitually thought of you
more in the night than I am quite equal to."

"Then don't think of me," retorted Miss
Havisham.

"Very easily said!" remarked Camilla,
amiably repressing a sob, while a hitch came
into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed.
"Raymond is a witness what ginger and sal
volatile I am obliged to take in the night.
Raymond is a witness what nervous jerkings
I have in my legs. Chokings and nervous
jerkings, however, are nothing new to me
when I think with anxiety of those I love.
If I could be less affectionate and sensitive, I
should have a better digestion and an iron set
of nerves. I am sure I wish it could be so.
But as to not thinking of you in the night—
The idea!" Here, a burst of tears.

The Raymond referred to, I understood to be
the gentleman present, and him I understood
to be Mr. Camilla. He came to the rescue at
this point, and said in a consolatory and
complimentary voice, "Camilla, my dear, it is well
known that your family feelings are gradually
undermining you to the extent of making one
of your legs shorter than the other."

"I am not aware," observed the grave lady
whose voice I had heard but once, "that to
think of any person is to make a great claim
upon that person, my dear."

Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a