But what would you have? You have been
very good to me, and I owe everything to you.
What would you have?"

"Love," replied the other.

"You have it."

"I have not," said Miss Havisham.

"Mother by adoption," retorted Estella,
never departing from the easy grace of her attitude,
never raising her voice as the other did,
never yielding either to anger or tenderness,

"Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe
everything to you. All I possess is freely yours.
All that you have given me, is at your command
to have again. Beyond that, I have nothing.
And if you ask me to give you what you never
gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities."

"Did I never give her, love!" cried Miss
Havisham, turning wildly to me. "Did I never
give her a burning love, inseparable from
jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while
she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad,
let her call me mad!"

"Why should I call you mad," returned
Estella, "I, of all people? Does any one live,
who knows what set purposes you have, half as
well as I do? Does any one live, who knows
what a steady memory you have, half as well as
I do? I, who have sat on this same hearth on
the little stool that is even now beside you there,
learning your lessons and looking up into your
face, when your face was strange and frightened
me!"

"Soon forgotten!" moaned Miss Havisham.
"Times soon forgotten!"

"No, not forgotten," retorted Estella. "Not
forgotten, but treasured up in my memory.
When have you found me false to your teaching?
When have you found me unmindful of
your lessons? When have you found me giving
admission here," she touched her bosom with
her hand, "to anything that you excluded? Be
just to me."

"So proud, so proud!" moaned Miss Havisham,
pushing away her grey hair with both her
hands.

"Who taught me to be proud?" returned
Estella. "Who praised me when I learnt my
lesson?"

"So hard, so hard!" moaned Miss Havisham,
with her former action.

Who taught me to be hard?" returned Estella.
"Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?"

"But to be proud and hard to me!" Miss
Havisham quite shrieked, as she stretched out
her arms. "Estella, Estella, Estella, to be
proud and hard to me!"

Estella looked at her for a moment with a
kind of calm wonder, but was not otherwise disturbed;
when the moment was past she looked
down at the fire again.

"I cannot think," said Estella, raising her
eyes after a silence, "why you should be so unreasonable
when I come to see you after a separation.
I have never forgotten your wrongs
and their causes. I have never been unfaithful
to you or your schooling. I have never
shown any weakness that I can charge myself
with."

"Would it be weakness to return my love?"
exclaimed Miss Havisham. "But yes, yes, she
would call it so!"

"I begin to think," said Estella, in a musing
way, after another moment of calm wonder,
"that I almost understand how this comes
about. If you had brought up your adopted
daughter wholly in the dark confinement of
these rooms, and had never let her know that
there was such a thing as the daylight by which
she has never once seen your face—if you had
done that, and then, for a purpose had wanted her
to understand the daylight and know all about
it, you would have been disappointed and
angry?"

Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands,
sat making a low moaning, and swaying herself
on her chair, but gave no answer.

"Or," said Estella, "—which is a nearer case
—if you had taught her, from the dawn of
her intelligence, with your utmost energy and
might, that there was such a thing as daylight,
but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer,
and she must always turn against it, for
it had blighted you and would else blight her;
—if you had done this, and then, for a purpose,
had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight
and she could not do it, you would have
been disappointed and angry?"

Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so,
for I could not see her face), but still made no
answer.

"So," said Estella, "I must be taken as I
have been made. The success is not mine, the
failure is not mine, but the two together make
me."

Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly
knew how, upon the floor, among the faded
bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took
advantage of the moment—I had sought one
from the first—to leave the room, after beseeching
Estella's attention to her, with a movement
of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet
standing by the great chimney-piece, just as she
had stood throughout. Miss Havisham's grey
hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the
other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight
to see.

It was with a depressed heart that I walked
in the starlight for an hour and more, about the
court-yard, and about the brewery, and about
the ruined garden. When I at last took courage
to return to the room, I found Estella sitting at
Miss Havisham's knee, taking up some stitches
in one of those old articles of dress that were
dropping to pieces, and of which I have often
been reminded since by the faded tatters of
old banners that I have seen hanging up in
cathedrals. Afterwards, Estella and I played
cards, as of yore—only we were skilful now, and
played French games—and so the evening wore
away, and I went to bed.

I lay in that separate building across the
court-yard. It was the first time I had ever