“It is, Miss Pocket.  I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and family are all well.”

“Are they any wiser?” said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head; “they had better be wiser, than well.  Ah, Matthew, Matthew!  You know your way, sir?”

Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many a time.  I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham’s room.  “Pip’s rap,” I heard her say, immediately; “come in, Pip.”

She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her eyes on the fire.  Sitting near her, with the white shoe that had never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen.

“Come in, Pip,” Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking round or up; “come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh? — Well?”

She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in a grimly playful manner,

“Well?”

“I heard, Miss Havisham,” said I, rather at a loss, “that you were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly.”

“Well?”

The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella’s eyes.  But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly, in all things winning admiration had made such wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none.  I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again.  O the sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!

She gave me her hand.  I stammered something about the pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it for a long, long time.

“Do you find her much changed, Pip?” asked Miss Havisham, with her greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between them, as a sign to me to sit down there.

“When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so curiously into the old—­”

“What?  You are not going to say into the old Estella?” Miss Havisham interrupted.  “She was proud and insulting, and you wanted to go away from her.  Don’t you remember?”

I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better then, and the like.  Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having been very disagreeable.

“Is he changed?” Miss Havisham asked her.

“Very much,” said Estella, looking at me.

“Less coarse and common?” said Miss Havisham, playing with Estella’s hair.

Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down.  She treated me as a boy still, but she lured me on.