"Or," said Estella,--"which is a nearer case,--if you had taught
her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and
might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was
made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn
against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her;--if
you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take
naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have
been disappointed and angry?"
Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not see
her face), but still made no answer.
"So," said Estella, "I must be taken as I have been made. The
success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together
make me."
Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, upon the floor,
among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took
advantage of the moment--I had sought one from the first--to
leave the room, after beseeching Estella's attention to her, with a
movement of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the
great chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss
Havisham's gray hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the
other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see.
It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for an
hour and more, about the courtyard, and about the brewery, and
about the ruined garden.
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