`What do you play, boy?' asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.

`Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.'

`Beggar him,' said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot form which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed from could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then, of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.

`He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!' said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. `And what coarse hands he has!And what thick boots!'

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.

`You say nothing of her,' remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked on. `She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?'

`I don't like to say,' I stammered.

`Tell me in my ear,' said Miss Havisham, bending down.

`I think she is very proud,' I replied, in a whisper.

`Anything else?'

`I think she is very pretty.'

`Anything else?'

`I think she is very insulting.' (She was looking at me then with a look of supreme aversion.)

`Anything else?'

`I think I should like to go home.'

`And never see her again, though she is so pretty?'

`I am not sure that I shouldn't like to see her again, but I should like to go home now.'

`You shall go soon,' said Miss Havisham, aloud. `Play the game out.'