. Brandley's house and out of Mrs. Brandley's house, I suffered
every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me. The
nature of my relations with her, which placed me on terms of familiarity
without placing me on terms of favor, conduced to my distraction.
She made use of me to tease other admirers, and she turned the very
familiarity between herself and me to the account of putting a constant
slight on my devotion to her. If I had been her secretary, steward,
half-brother, poor relation,--if I had been a younger brother of her
appointed husband,--I could not have seemed to myself further from my
hopes when I was nearest to her. The privilege of calling her by her
name and hearing her call me by mine became, under the circumstances
an aggravation of my trials; and while I think it likely that it almost
maddened her other lovers, I know too certainly that it almost maddened
me.

She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an admirer of
every one who went near her; but there were more than enough of them
without that.

I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and I used
often to take her and the Brandleys on the water; there were picnics,
fete days, plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of pleasures,
through which I pursued her,--and they were all miseries to me. I never
had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the
four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me
unto death.

Throughout this part of our intercourse,--and it lasted, as will
presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time,--she habitually
reverted to that tone which expressed that our association was forced
upon us. There were other times when she would come to a sudden check in
this tone and in all her many tones, and would seem to pity me.

"Pip, Pip," she said one evening, coming to such a check, when we sat
apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond; "will you never
take warning?"

"Of what?"

"Of me."

"Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?"

"Do I mean! If you don't know what I mean, you are blind."

I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed blind, but for the
reason that I always was restrained--and this was not the least of my
miseries--by a feeling that it was ungenerous to press myself upon her,
when she knew that she could not choose but obey Miss Havisham. My
dread always was, that this kno