`Is that all the story?' I asked, after considering it.

`All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it was absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten one thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced confidence, acted throughout in concert with her half-brother; that it was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the profits.'

`I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property,' said I.

`He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may have been a part of her half-brother's scheme,' said Herbert.

`Mind! I don't know that.'

`What became of the two men?' I asked, after again considering the subject.

`They fell into deeper shame and degradation - if there can be deeper - and ruin.'

`Are they alive now?'

`I don't know.'

`You said just now, that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, but adopted. When adopted?'

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. `There has always been an Estella, since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now, Handel,' said he, finally throwing off the story as it were, `there is a perfectly open understanding between us. All that I know about Miss Havisham, you know.'

`And all that I know,' I retorted, `you know.'

`I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity between you and me. And as to the condition on which you hold your advancement in life - namely, that you are not to inquire or discuss to whom you owe it - you may be very sure that it will never be encroached upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one belonging to me.'

In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the subject done with, even though I should be under his father's roof for years and years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning, too, that I felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my benefactress, as I understood the fact myself.

It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme for the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were so much the lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived this to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked him, in the course of conversation, what he was? He replied, `A capitalist - an Insurer of Ships.' I suppose he saw me glancing about the room in search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital, for he added, `In the City.'

I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of Ships in the City, and I began to think with awe, of having laid a young Insurer on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his responsible head open. But, again, there came upon me, for my relief, that odd impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very successful or rich.

`I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, and cut into the Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining way. None of these things will interfere with my chartering a few thousand tons on my own account. I think I shall trade,' said he, leaning back in his chair, `to the East Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woóds. It's an interesting trade.'