stella waiting with the keys.
But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her
waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though something
had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the gate, too,
she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.

"Come here! You may kiss me, if you like."

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone
through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was
given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and
that it was worth nothing.

What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with
the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the light
on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming against
a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was flinging a path of fire across
the road.

Chapter XII

My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman. The
more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman on
his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the
more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt that
the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would
avenge it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had
incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking
about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into
the studious youth of England, without laying themselves open to severe
punishment. For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at
the kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before going
on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail should pounce upon
me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trousers, and I tried
to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead of night. I had cut
my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's teeth, and I twisted my
imagination into a thousand tangles, as I devised incredible ways of
accounting for that damnatory circumstance when I should be haled before
the Judges.

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of
violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of Justice,
specially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush behind the
gate;--whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal vengeance for
an outrage done to her house, might rise in those grave-clothe