"When the ruin is complete," said she, with a ghastly look, "and when

they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table,--which shall

be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him,--so much the

better if it is done on this day!"

She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure

lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too remained

quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time. In

the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its

remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I might

presently begin to decay.

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At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an

instant, Miss Havisham said, "Let me see you two play cards; why have

you not begun?" With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as

before; I was beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham

watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella's beauty, and

made me notice it the more by trying her jewels on Estella's breast and

hair.

Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before, except that she

did not condescend to speak. When we had played some half-dozen games,

a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard

to be fed in the former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left to

wander about as I liked.

It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall which

I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on that last

occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no gate then, and that I

saw one now. As it stood open, and as I knew that Estella had let

the visitors out,--for she had returned with the keys in her hand,--I

strolled into the garden, and strolled all over it. It was quite a

wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it,

which seemed in their decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of

weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a weedy

offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.

When I had exhausted the garden and a greenhouse with nothing in it but

a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found myself in the dismal

corner upon which I had looked out of the window. Never questioning for

a moment that the house was now empty, I looked in at another window,

and found myself, to my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a

pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.




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