She fainted and afterward lay for a long time ill. When she recovered
she laid the whole place waste. She never afterward let the light of day
into the old mansion. The shutters were closed, candles were kept always
lighted, and all the clocks in the house were stopped at exactly twenty
minutes to nine o'clock. Not a thing in any room was changed. The
bride-cake rotted on the table, the decorations faded on the walls, and
day after day Miss Havisham sat in the dressing-room clad in her wedding
gown and veil, with one slipper on, the dead flowers on her table and
the trunks for her wedding journey scattered about half-packed. In time
she became shrunken and old and the white satin and lace became faded
yellow, but she never varied this habit of life.
Soon after her love disappointment she had written to her lawyer in
London, who was named Jaggers, asking him to find a baby girl for her
to adopt as her own. Now Mr. Jaggers had just defended in court a man
named Abel Magwitch, the tool of Compeyson, who had broken Miss
Havisham's heart. Compeyson had tempted Magwitch into passing some
stolen money and they had both been arrested. At the trial Compeyson
(sneak and liar as he was!) threw all the blame on his comrade, who was
duller and less sharp than he, and as a consequence, while Compeyson got
a light sentence, Magwitch, though really the more innocent of the two,
had been sent to the prison-ship for a term of many years. These two
men, by the way, were the pair who escaped from the hulks into the
marshes. Magwitch was Pip's convict of the churchyard, and Compeyson was
the one he had dragged back to capture. This Magwitch, at the time of
his arrest, had a baby daughter, who had fallen into Mr. Jaggers's care,
and in answer to Miss Havisham's request the lawyer had sent the little
girl to her, telling her nothing whatever of the child's parentage.
Miss Havisham had named the child Estella, and, seeing she would be a
very beautiful woman, had determined to bring her up heartless and cold,
to ruin as many men's lives as possible, so as to avenge her own wrongs
and broken heart.
So Estella had grown up in the dismal house, Miss Havisham's only
companion. Day by day she became more lovely, and even while she was
still a little girl, the same age as Pip, Miss Havisham was impatient
to begin teaching her her lesson.
This was the reason Pip had received his invitation to Miss Havisham's
house. Though he had no idea of it, he was intended only as practice for
little Estella, who under Miss Havisham's teaching was growing up very
fond of admiration and very cold-hearted, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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