At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it after admitting me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously saying, "You are to come this way today," and took me to quite another part of the house.
We went in through a door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a low ceiling, on the ground floor at the back. There was some company in the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, "You are to go and stand there, boy, till you are wanted."
"There", being the window, I crossed to it, and stood "there," in a very uncomfortable state of mind, looking out.
I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and that its other occupants were looking at me. I stiffened in all my joints with the consciousness that I was under close inspection.
There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs. It took a little while longer to discern that they were called Sarah Pocket, Camilla, Georgiana, and Cousin Raymond.
The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some cry or call along the passage by which I had come, caused Estella to say to me, "Now, boy!" On my turning round, they all looked at me with the utmost contempt.
As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting manner with her face quite close to mine:
"Well?"
"Well, miss?" I answered, almost falling over her and checking myself.
She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her.
"Am I pretty?"
"Yes; I think you are very pretty."
"Am I insulting?"
"Not so much so as you were last time," said I.
"Not so much so?"
"No."
She fired when she asked the last question, and kicked my feet out from under me when I answered it. As I fell, Estella gave me such a violent shove that I was sent hurtling against the wall.
"Now?" said she. "You little weak monster, what do you think of me now?"
"I shall not tell you," said I, picking myself from the ground.
"Because you are going to tell, up-stairs. Is that it?"
"No," said I, "that's not it."
"Why don't you cry again, you little wretch?"
"Because I'll never cry for you again," said I. Which was, I suppose, as false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly crying for her then, and I know what I know of the pain she cost me afterwards.
