rless beauties, a mean, miserable idiot! I
whispered Herbert.

"I know that lady," said Herbert, across the table, when the toast had
been honored.

"Do you?" said Drummle.

"And so do I," I added, with a scarlet face.

"Do you?" said Drummle. "O, Lord!"

This was the only retort--except glass or crockery--that the heavy
creature was capable of making; but, I became as highly incensed by it
as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately rose in my place
and said that I could not but regard it as being like the honorable
Finch's impudence to come down to that Grove,--we always talked
about coming down to that Grove, as a neat Parliamentary turn of
expression,--down to that Grove, proposing a lady of whom he knew
nothing. Mr. Drummle, upon this, starting up, demanded what I meant by
that? Whereupon I made him the extreme reply that I believed he knew
where I was to be found.

Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on without blood,
after this, was a question on which the Finches were divided. The debate
upon it grew so lively, indeed, that at least six more honorable members
told six more, during the discussion, that they believed they knew where
they were to be found. However, it was decided at last (the Grove being
a Court of Honor) that if Mr. Drummle would bring never so slight
a certificate from the lady, importing that he had the honor of her
acquaintance, Mr. Pip must express his regret, as a gentleman and a
Finch, for "having been betrayed into a warmth which." Next day was
appointed for the production (lest our honor should take cold from
delay), and next day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal in
Estella's hand, that she had had the honor of dancing with him several
times. This left me no course but to regret that I had been "betrayed
into a warmth which," and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the
idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then sat snorting
at one another for an hour, while the Grove engaged in indiscriminate
contradiction, and finally the promotion of good feeling was declared to
have gone ahead at an amazing rate.

I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I cannot
adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella should
show any favor to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby, so very far below
the average. To the present moment, I believe it to have been referable
to some pure fire of generosity and disintereste