"
"So proud, so proud!" moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her gray
hair with both her hands.
"Who taught me to be proud?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when
I learnt my lesson?"
"So hard, so hard!" moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.
"Who taught me to be hard?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when
I learnt my lesson?"
"But to be proud and hard to me!" Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as
she stretched out her arms. "Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud
and hard to me!"
Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but
was not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she looked
down at the fire again.
"I cannot think," said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence
"why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a
separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I
have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have never
shown any weakness that I can charge myself with."
"Would it be weakness to return my love?" exclaimed Miss Havisham.
"But yes, yes, she would call it so!"
"I begin to think," said Estella, in a musing way, after another
moment of calm wonder, "that I almost understand how this comes
about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the
dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that
there was such a thing as the daylight by which she had never once
seen your face,--if you had done that, and then, for a purpose had
wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you
would have been disappointed and angry?"
Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low
moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer.
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