dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as he wrote in a
corner, were decorated with dirty winding-sheets,
as if in remembrance of a host of hanged clients.

We went to Gerrard-street, all three together,
in a hackney-coach: and as soon as we
got there, dinner was served. Although I
should not have thought of making, in that
place, the most distant reference by so much as
a look to Wemmick's Walworth sentiments, yet
I should have had no objection to catching his
eye now and then in a friendly way. But it
was not to be done. He turned his eyes on
Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the
table, and was as dry and distant to me as if
there were twin Wemmicks and this was the
wrong one.

"Did you send that note of Miss Havisham's
to Mr. Pip, Wemmick?" Mr. Jaggers asked,
soon after we began dinner.

"No, sir," returned Wemmick; "it was going
by post, when you brought Mr. Pip into the
office. Here it is." He handed it to his principal,
instead of to me.

"It's a note of two lines, Pip," said Mr.
Jaggers, handing it on, "sent up to me by Miss
Havisham, on account of her not being sure of
your address. She tells me that she wants to
see you on a little matter of business you
mentioned to her. You'll go down?"

"Yes," said I, casting my eyes over the note,
which was exactly in those terms.

"When do you think of going down?"

"I have an impending engagement," said I,
glancing at Wemmick, who was putting fish
into the post-office, "that renders me rather
uncertain of my time. At once, I think."

"If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at
once," said Wemmick to Mr. Jaggers, "he
needn't write an answer, you know."

Receiving this as an intimation that it was
best not to delay, I settled that I would go
tomorrow, and said so. Wemmick drank a glass
of wine and looked with a grimly satisfied air at
Mr. Jaggers, but not at me.

"So, Pip! our friend the Spider," said Mr.
Jaggers, "has played his cards. He has won
the pool."

It was as much as I could do to assent.

"Hah! He is a promising fellow—in his way
—but he may not have it all his own way. The
stronger will win in the end, but the stronger
has to be found out first. If he should turn to,
and beat her——"

"Surely," I interrupted, with a burning face
and heart, "you do not seriously think that
he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr.
Jaggers?"

"I didn't say so, Pip. I am putting a case.
If he should turn to and beat her, he may
possibly get the strength on his side; if it should
be a question of intellect, he certainly will not.
It would be chance work to give an opinion
how a fellow of that sort will turn out in such
circumstances, because it's a toss-up between
two results."

"May I ask what they are?"

"A fellow like our friend the Spider,"
answered Mr. Jaggers, "either beats, or cringes.
He may cringe and growl, or cringe and not
growl; but he either beats or cringes. Ask
Wemmick his opinion."

"Either beats or cringes," said Wemmick,
not at all addressing himself to me.

"So here's to Mrs. Bentley Brummle," said
Mr. Jaggers, taking a decanter of choicer wine
from his dumb-waiter, and filling for each of us
and for himself, "and may the question of
supremacy be settled to the lady's satisfaction!
To the satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman,
it never will be. Now, Molly, Molly,
Molly, Molly, how slow you are to-day!"

She was at his elbow when he addressed her,
putting a dish upon the table. As she withdrew
her hands from it, she fell back a step or
two, nervously muttering some excuse, and a
certain action of her fingers as she spoke
arrested my attention.

"What's the matter?" said Mr. Jaggers.

"Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking
of," said I, "was rather painful to me."

The action of her fingers was like the action
of knitting. She stood looking at her master,
not understanding whether she was free to go,
or whether he had more to say to her and would
call her back if she did go. Her look was very
intent. Surely, I had seen exactly such eyes
and such hands, on a memorable occasion very
lately!

He dismissed her, and she glided out of the
room. But she remained before me, as plainly
as if she were still there. I looked at those
hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that
flowing hair; and I compared them with other
hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew of,
and with what those might be after twenty years
of a brutal husband and a stormy life. I looked
again at those hands and eyes of the housekeeper,
and thought of the inexplicable feeling,
that had come over me when I last walked—not
alone—in the ruined garden, and through the
deserted brewery. I thought how the same
feeling had come back when I saw a face looking
at me, and a hand waving to me, from a
stagecoach window; and how it had come back
again and had flashed about me like Lightning,
when I had passed in a carriage—not alone—
through a sudden glare of light in a dark
street. I thought how one link of association
had helped that identification in the theatre,
and how such a link, wanting before, had been
riveted for me now, when I had passed by a
chance swift from Estella's name to the fingers
with their knitting action, and the attentive eyes.
And I felt absolutely certain that this woman
was Estella's mother.

Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and
was not likely to have missed the sentiments I
had been at no pains to conceal. He nodded
when I said the subject was painful to me,
clapped me on the back, put round the wine
again, and went on with his dinner.

Only twice more, did the housekeeper
reappear, and then her stay in the room was very
short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her.