“No, sir,” returned Wemmick; “it was going by post, when you brought Mr. Pip into the office.  Here it is.”  He handed it to his principal, instead of to me.

“It’s a note of two lines, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, handing it on, “sent up to me by Miss Havisham, on account of her not being sure of your address.  She tells me that she wants to see you on a little matter of business you mentioned to her.  You’ll go down?”

“Yes,” said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly in those terms.

“When do you think of going down?”

“I have an impending engagement,” said I, glancing at Wemmick, who was putting fish into the post-office, “that renders me rather uncertain of my time.  At once, I think.”

“If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,” said Wemmick to Mr. Jaggers, “he needn’t write an answer, you know.”

Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, I settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so.  Wemmick drank a glass of wine and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jaggers, but not at me.

“So, Pip!  Our friend the Spider,” said Mr. Jaggers, “has played his cards.  He has won the pool.”

It was as much as I could do to assent.

“Hah!  He is a promising fellow — in his way — but he may not have it all his own way.  The stronger will win in the end, but the stronger has to be found out first.  If he should turn to, and beat her—­”

“Surely,” I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, “you do not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr. Jaggers?”

“I didn’t say so, Pip.  I am putting a case.  If he should turn to and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side; if it should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not.  It would be chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will turn out in such circumstances, because it’s a toss-up between two results.”

“May I ask what they are?”

“A fellow like our friend the Spider,” answered Mr. Jaggers, “either beats, or cringes.  He may cringe and growl, or cringe and not growl; but he either beats or cringes.  Ask Wemmick his opinion.”

“Either beats or cringes,” said Wemmick, not at all addressing himself to me.

“So, here’s to Mrs. Bentley Drummle,” said Mr. Jaggers, taking a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, and filling for each of us and for himself, “and may the question of supremacy be settled to the lady’s satisfaction!  To the satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman, it never will be.  Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, how slow you are to-day!”

She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon the table.  As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step or two, nervously muttering some excuse.  And a certain action of her fingers as she spoke arrested my attention.

“What’s the matter?” said Mr. Jaggers.