d candle. Can the candle help it?"

"No," I returned; "but cannot the Estella help it?"

"Well!" said she, laughing, after a moment, "perhaps. Yes. Anything you
like."

"But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that you should
encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. You know he is
despised."

"Well?" said she.

"You know he is as ungainly within as without. A deficient,
ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow."

"Well?" said she.

"You know he has nothing to recommend him but money and a ridiculous
roll of addle-headed predecessors; now, don't you?"

"Well?" said she again; and each time she said it, she opened her lovely
eyes the wider.

To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I took it
from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, "Well! Then, that is why
it makes me wretched."

Now, if I could have believed that she favored Drummle with any idea of
making me-me--wretched, I should have been in better heart about it;
but in that habitual way of hers, she put me so entirely out of the
question, that I could believe nothing of the kind.

"Pip," said Estella, casting her glance over the room, "don't be foolish
about its effect on you. It may have its effect on others, and may be
meant to have. It's not worth discussing."

"Yes it is," said I, "because I cannot bear that people should say, 'she
throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boor, the lowest in the
crowd.'"

"I can bear it," said Estella.

"Oh! don't be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible."

"Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath!" said Estella, opening
her hands. "And in his last breath reproached me for stooping to a
boor!"

"There is no doubt you do," said I, something hurriedly, "for I have
seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never
give to--me."

"Do you want me then," said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and
serious, if not angry, look, "to deceive and entrap you?"

"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?"

"Yes, and many others,--all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley. I'll
say no more."

And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so filled my
heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass on unhindered,
to the event that had impended over me longer yet; the event that had
begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the world held Estella,
and in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving its firs