glanced from me to her, and from her to me.

"I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It induced me
to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. While I thought you
could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained from saying it. But I
must say it now."

Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still going,
Estella shook her head.

"I know," said I, in answer to that action,--"I know. I have no hope
that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become
of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love
you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house."

Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she shook her
head again.

"It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise
on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these
years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the
gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that, in the
endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella."

I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as she
sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.

"It seems," said Estella, very calmly, "that there are sentiments,
fancies,--I don't know how to call them,--which I am not able to
comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form
of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you touch
nothing there. I don't care for what you say at all. I have tried to
warn you of this; now, have I not?"

I said in a miserable manner, "Yes."

"Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean it.
Now, did you not think so?"

"I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried, and
beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in Nature."

"It is in my nature," she returned. And then she added, with a stress
upon the words, "It is in the nature formed within me. I make a great
difference between you and all other people when I say so much. I can do
no more."

"Is it not true," said I, "that Bentley Drummle is in town here, and
pursuing you?"

"It is quite true," she replied, referring to him with the indifference
of utter contempt.

"That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he dines with
you this very day?"

She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again replied,
"Quite true."

"You cannot love him, Es