ot,--and as Drummle leaned down
from the saddle and lighted his cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his
head towards the coffee-room windows, the slouching shoulders and ragged
hair of this man whose back was towards me reminded me of Orlick.

Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it were he or
no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the weather and the
journey from my face and hands, and went out to the memorable old house
that it would have been so much the better for me never to have entered,
never to have seen.

Chapter XLIV

In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where the wax-candles
burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham and Estella; Miss Havisham
seated on a settee near the fire, and Estella on a cushion at her feet.
Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was looking on. They both raised
their eyes as I went in, and both saw an alteration in me. I derived
that, from the look they interchanged.

"And what wind," said Miss Havisham, "blows you here, Pip?"

Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was rather confused.
Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting with her eyes upon me, and
then going on, I fancied that I read in the action of her fingers, as
plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet, that she perceived I
had discovered my real benefactor.

"Miss Havisham," said I, "I went to Richmond yesterday, to speak to
Estella; and finding that some wind had blown her here, I followed."

Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth time to sit down,
I took the chair by the dressing-table, which I had often seen her
occupy. With all that ruin at my feet and about me, it seemed a natural
place for me, that day.

"What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before you,
presently--in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it will not
displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant me to be."

Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I could see in the
action of Estella's fingers as they worked that she attended to what I
said; but she did not look up.

"I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate discovery,
and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station, fortune,
anything. There are reasons why I must say no more of that. It is not my
secret, but another's."

As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and considering how to
go on, Miss Havisham repeated, "It is not your secre