mind and conscience. But Estella is a different case, and if
you can ever undo any scrap of what you have done amiss in keeping a
part of her right nature away from her, it will be better to do that
than to bemoan the past through a hundred years."

"Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip--my dear!" There was an earnest womanly
compassion for me in her new affection. "My dear! Believe this: when she
first came to me, I meant to save her from misery like my own. At first,
I meant no more."

"Well, well!" said I. "I hope so."

"But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did
worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings,
and with this figure of myself always before her, a warning to back and
point my lessons, I stole her heart away, and put ice in its place."

"Better," I could not help saying, "to have left her a natural heart,
even to be bruised or broken."

With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while, and then
burst out again, What had she done!

"If you knew all my story," she pleaded, "you would have some compassion
for me and a better understanding of me."

"Miss Havisham," I answered, as delicately as I could, "I believe I may
say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since I first left
this neighborhood. It has inspired me with great commiseration, and I
hope I understand it and its influences. Does what has passed between us
give me any excuse for asking you a question relative to Estella? Not as
she is, but as she was when she first came here?"

She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, and
her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said this, and
replied, "Go on."

"Whose child was Estella?"

She shook her head.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head again.

"But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?"

"Brought her here."

"Will you tell me how that came about?"

She answered in a low whisper and with caution: "I had been shut up in
these rooms a long time (I don't know how long; you know what time the
clocks keep here), when I told him that I wanted a little girl to rear
and love, and save from my fate. I had first seen him when I sent
for him to lay this place waste for me; having read of him in the
newspapers, before I and the world parted. He told me that he would
look about him for such an orphan child. One night he brought her here
asleep, and I called her Estella."

"Migh