betrayed me to Herbert; but, he then declared
that the secret of Herbert's partnership had been
long enough upon his conscience, and he must
tell it. So, he told it, and Herbert was as
much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow
and I were not the worse friends for the long
concealment. I must not leave it to be supposed
that we were ever a great House, or that
we made mints of money. We were not in a
grand way of business, but we had a good name,
and worked for our profits, and did very well. We
owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful
industry and readiness, that I often wondered how
I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude,
until I was one day enlightened by the reflection,
that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in
him at all, but had been in me.

CHAPTER LIX.

FOR eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy
with my bodily eyes—though they had both been
often before my fancy in the East—when, upon
an evening in December, an hour or two after
dark, I laid my hand softly on the latch of the
old kitchen door. I touched it so softly that I
was not heard, and looked in unseen. There,
smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen
firelight, as hale and as strong as ever though a
little grey, sat Joe; and there, fenced into the
corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own
little stool looking at the fire, was——I again!

"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake,
dear old chap," said Joe, delighted when I took
another stool by the child's side (but I did not
rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow
a little bit like you, and we think he do."

I thought so too, and I took him out for a
walk next morning, and we talked immensely,
understanding one another to perfection. And
I took him down to the churchyard, and set him
on a certain tombstone there, and he showed me
from that elevation which stone was sacred to the
memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and
Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above.

"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after
dinner, as her little girl lay sleeping in her lap,
"you must give Pip to me, one of these days;
or lend him, at all events."

"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must
marry."

"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think
I shall, Biddy. I have so settled down in their
home, that it's not at all likely. I am already
quite an old bachelor."

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its
little hand to her lips, and then put the good
matronly hand with which she had touched it,
into mine. There was something in the action
and in the light pressure of Biddy's wedding-
ring, that had a very pretty eloquence in it.

"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you
don't fret for her?"

"O no—I think not, Biddy."

"Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you
quite forgotten her?"

"My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in
my life that ever had a foremost place there,
and little that ever had any place there. But
that poor dream, as I once used to call it,
has all gone by, Biddy, all gone by!"

Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words
that I secretly intended to revisit the site of the
old house that evening alone, for her sake. Yes,
even so. For Estella's sake.

I had heard of her, as leading a most unhappy
life, and as being separated from her husband,
who had used her with great cruelty, and who
had become quite renowned as a compound of
pride, avarice, brutality, and meanness. And I
had heard of the death of her husband, from an
accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a
horse. This release had befallen her some two
years before; for anything I knew, she was
married again.

The early dinner hour at Joe's, left me
abundance of time, without hurrying my talk with
Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before dark.
But, what with loitering on the way, to look at
old objects and to think of old times, the day
had quite declined when I came to the place.

There was no house now, no brewery, no
building whatever left, but the wall of the old
garden. The cleared space had been enclosed
with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw
that some of the old ivy had struck root anew,
and was growing green on low quiet mounds of
ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I
pushed it open, and went in.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon,
and the moon was not yet up to scatter
it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist,
and the moon was coming, and the evening was
not dark. I could trace out where every part
of the old house had been, and where the
brewery had been, and where the gates, and
where the casks. I had done so, and was looking
along the desolate garden-walk, when I
beheld a solitary figure in it.

The figure showed itself aware of me, as
I advanced. It had been moving towards
me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw
it to be the figure of a woman. As I drew
nearer yet, it was about to turn away, when it
stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it
faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my
name, and I cried out:

"Estella!"

"I am greatly changed. I wonder you know
me."

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone,
but its indescribable majesty and its indescribable
charm remained. Those attractions in it,
I had seen before; what I had never seen
before, was the saddened softened light of the
once proud eyes; what I had never felt before,
was the friendly touch of the once insensible
hand.

We sat down on a bench that was near, and I
said, "After so many years, it is strange that we
should thus meet again, Estella, here where our
first meeting was! Do you often come back?"

"I have never been here since."

"Nor I."

The moon began to rise, and I thought of the