"They are your friends," said Miss Havisham.
"They made themselves my friends," said I, "when they supposed me
to have superseded them; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and
Mistress Camilla were not my friends, I think."
This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see, to do
them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little while, and then
said quietly,-"What do you want for them?"
"Only," said I, "that you would not confound them with the others. They
may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the same
nature."
Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated,-"What do you want for them?"
"I am not so cunning, you see," I said, in answer, conscious that I
reddened a little, "as that I could hide from you, even if I desired,
that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would spare the money
to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but which from the
nature of the case must be done without his knowledge, I could show you
how."
"Why must it be done without his knowledge?" she asked, settling her
hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more attentively.
"Because," said I, "I began the service myself, more than two years ago,
without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. Why I fail in my
ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part of the secret which
is another person's and not mine."
She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on the fire.
After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by the light
of the slowly wasting candles to be a long time, she was roused by
the collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards me again--at
first, vacantly--then, with a gradually concentrating attention. All
this time Estella knitted on. When Miss Havisham had fixed her
attention on me, she said, speaking as if there had been no lapse in our
dialogue,-"What else?"
"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my
trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I have loved you
long and dearly."
She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her fingers
plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved countenance. I
saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and from her to me.