senting I know not what impossible personage
lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches
to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of
a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to
have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if
I could.

"Who 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 wit