“Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I.

“Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may keep a gentleman.  Well!  Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud.  So was his daughter.”

“Miss Havisham was an only child?” I hazarded.

“Stop a moment, I am coming to that.  No, she was not an only child; she had a half-brother.  Her father privately married again — his cook, I rather think.”

“I thought he was proud,” said I.

“My good Handel, so he was.  He married his second wife privately, because he was proud, and in course of time she died.  When she was dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and then the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you are acquainted with.  As the son grew a young man, he turned out riotous, extravagant, undutiful — altogether bad.  At last his father disinherited him; but he softened when he was dying, and left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham. - Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one’s glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one’s nose.”

I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital.  I thanked him, and apologized.  He said, “Not at all,” and resumed.

“Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked after as a great match.  Her half-brother had now ample means again, but what with debts and what with new madness wasted them most fearfully again.  There were stronger differences between him and her, than there had been between him and his father, and it is suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal grudge against her, as having influenced the father’s anger.  Now, I come to the cruel part of the story — merely breaking off, my dear Handel, to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a tumbler.”

Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable to say.  I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to compress it within those limits.  Again I thanked him and apologized, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, “Not at all, I am sure!” and resumed.

“There appeared upon the scene — say at the races, or the public balls, or anywhere else you like — a certain man, who made love to Miss Havisham.  I never saw him, for this happened five-and-twenty years ago (before you and I were, Handel), but I have heard my father mention that he was a showy-man, and the kind of man for the purpose.  But that he was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates; because it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner.  He