She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private sitting-room.  Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a magic clue without which he couldn’t find the way up-stairs, and led us to the black hole of the establishment:  fitted up with a diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous article considering the hole’s proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody’s pattens.  On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched leaf of a copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust.  Having looked at this extinct conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order:  which, proving to be merely “Some tea for the lady,” sent him out of the room in a very low state of mind.

I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one to infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that the enterprising proprietor was boiling down the horses for the refreshment department.  Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it.  I thought that with her I could have been happy there for life. (I was not at all happy there at the time, observe, and I knew it well.)

“Where are you going to, at Richmond?” I asked Estella.

“I am going to live,” said she, “at a great expense, with a lady there, who has the power — or says she has — of taking me about, and introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to people.”

“I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

She answered so carelessly, that I said, “You speak of yourself as if you were some one else.”

“Where did you learn how I speak of others?  Come, come,” said Estella, smiling delightfully, “you must not expect me to go to school to you; I must talk in my own way.  How do you thrive with Mr. Pocket?”

“I live quite pleasantly there; at least—­” It appeared to me that I was losing a chance.

“At least?” repeated Estella.

“As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you.”

“You silly boy,” said Estella, quite composedly, “how can you talk such nonsense?  Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior to the rest of his family?”

“Very superior indeed.  He is nobody’s enemy—­”

“Don’t add but his own,” interposed Estella, “for I hate that class of man.  But he really is disinterested, and above small jealousy and spite, I have heard?”

“I am sure I have every reason to say so.”

“You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people,” said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was at once grave and rallying, “for they beset Miss Havisham with reports and insinuations to your disadvantage.  They watch you, misrepresent you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the torment and the occupation of their lives.  You can scarcely realize to yourself the hatred those people feel for you.”