says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.  Well!  This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her.  I believe she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she possessed, certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him.  There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him.  He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he must hold and manage it all.  Your guardian was not at that time in Miss Havisham’s councils, and she was too haughty and too much in love, to be advised by any one.  Her relations were poor and scheming, with the exception of my father; he was poor enough, but not time-serving or jealous.  The only independent one among them, he warned her that she was doing too much for this man, and was placing herself too unreservedly in his power.  She took the first opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his presence, and my father has never seen her since.”

I thought of her having said, “Matthew will come and see me at last when I am laid dead upon that table;” and I asked Herbert whether his father was so inveterate against her?

“It’s not that,” said he, “but she charged him, in the presence of her intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of fawning upon her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to her now, it would look true — even to him — and even to her.  To return to the man and make an end of him.  The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited.  The day came, but not the bridegroom.  He wrote her a letter—­”

“Which she received,” I struck in, “when she was dressing for her marriage?  At twenty minutes to nine?”

“At the hour and minute,” said Herbert, nodding, “at which she afterwards stopped all the clocks.  What was in it, further than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know.  When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day.”

“Is that all the story?” I asked, after considering it.

“All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it was absolutely requisite I should understand.  But I have forgotten one thing.  It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced confidence, acted throughout in concert with her half-brother; that it was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the profits.”