My studies were not directed in any professional channel, but were pursued with a view to my being equal to any emergency when my expectations, which I had been told to look forward to, were fulfilled.

Estella was often in London, and I met her at many houses, and was desperately in love with her.  But though she treated me with friendship, she was proud and capricious as ever, and a few years later married a man whom I knew and detested—­a Mr. Bentley Drummle, a bully and a scoundrel.

When I was three-and-twenty I happened to be alone one night in our chambers reading, for I had a taste for books.  Herbert was away at Marseilles on a business journey.

The clocks had struck eleven, and I closed my books.  I was still listening to the clocks, when I heard a footstep on the staircase, and started.  The staircase lights were blown out by the wind, and I took my reading-lamp and went out to see who it was.

“There is someone there, is there not?” I called out.  “What floor do you want?”

“The top—­Mr. Pip.”

“That is my name.  There is nothing the matter?”

“Nothing the matter,” returned the voice.  And the man came on.

I made out that the man was roughly but substantially dressed; that he had iron-grey hair; that his age was about sixty; that he was a muscular man, hardened by exposure to weather.  I saw nothing that in the least explained him, but I saw that he was holding out both his hands to me.

I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him.  No need to take a file from his pocket and show it to me.  I knew my convict, in spite of the intervening years, as distinctly as I knew him in the churchyard when we first stood face to face.

He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his forehead with his large brown hands.

“You acted nobly, my boy,” said he.

I told him that I hoped he had mended his way of life, and was doing well.

“I’ve done wonderful well,” he said.  And then he asked me if I was doing well.  And when I mentioned that I had been chosen to succeed to some property, he asked whose property?  And, after that, if my lawyer-guardian’s name began with “J.”

All the truth of my position came flashing on me, and quickly I understood that Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me were all a mere dream.

“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you.  It’s me wot has done it!  I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you.  I swore afterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, that you should get rich.  Look ’ee here, Pip.  I’m your second father.  You’re my son—­more to me nor any son.  I’ve put away money, only for you to spend.  You ain’t looked slowly forward to this as I have.  You wasn’t prepared for this as I wos.  It warn’t easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor it wasn’t safe.  Look ’ee here, dear boy; caution is necessary.”