She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure lying there.  I remained quiet.  Estella returned, and she too remained quiet.  It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time.  In the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I might presently begin to decay.

At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an instant, Miss Havisham said, “Let me see you two play cards; why have you not begun?” With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as before; I was beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella’s beauty, and made me notice it the more by trying her jewels on Estella’s breast and hair.

Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before; except that she did not condescend to speak.  When we had played some halfdozen games, a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard to be fed in the former dog-like manner.  There, too, I was again left to wander about as I liked.

It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall which I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on that last occasion, open or shut.  Enough that I saw no gate then, and that I saw one now.  As it stood open, and as I knew that Estella had let the visitors out — for, she had returned with the keys in her hand — I strolled into the garden and strolled all over it.  It was quite a wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it, which seemed in their decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.

When I had exhausted the garden, and a greenhouse with nothing in it but a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found myself in the dismal corner upon which I had looked out of the window.  Never questioning for a moment that the house was now empty, I looked in at another window, and found myself, to my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.

This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and re-appeared beside me.  He had been at his books when I had found myself staring at him, and I now saw that he was inky.

“Halloa!” said he, “young fellow!”

Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to be best answered by itself, I said, “Halloa!” politely omitting young fellow.

“Who let you in?” said he.

“Miss Estella.”

“Who gave you leave to prowl about?”

“Miss Estella.”

“Come and fight,” said the pale young gentleman.

What could I do but follow him?  I have often asked myself the question since:  but, what else could I do?  His manner was so final and I was so astonished, that I followed where he led, as if I had been under a spell.