I might have known that he would never help me out; but it took me aback to have to shape the question afresh, as if it were quite new. `Is it likely,' I said, after hesitating, `that my patron, the fountain-head you have spoken of, Mr Jaggers, will soon--' there I delicately stopped.

`Will soon what?' asked Mr Jaggers. `That's no question as it stands, you know.'

`Will soon come to London,' said I, after casting about for a precise form of words, `or summon me anywhere else?'

`Now here,' replied Mr Jaggers, fixing me for the first time with his dark deep-set eyes, `we must revert to the evening when we first encountered one another in your village. What did I tell you then, Pip?'

`You told me, Mr Jaggers, that it might be years hence when that person appeared.'

`Just so,' said Mr Jaggers; `that's my answer.'

As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come quicker in my strong desire to get something out of him. And as I felt that it came quicker, and as I felt that he saw that it came quicker, I felt that I had less chance than ever of getting anything out of him.

`Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr Jaggers?'

Mr Jaggers shook his head - not in negativing the question, but in altogether negativing the notion that he could anyhow be got to answer it - and the two horrible casts of the twitched faces looked, when my eyes strayed up to them, as if they had come to a crisis in their suspended attention, and were going to sneeze.

`Come!' said Mr Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs with the backs of his warmed hands, `I'll be plain with you, my friend Pip. That's a question I must not be asked. You'll understand that, better, when I tell you it's a question that might compromise me. Come! I'll go a little further with you; I'll say something more.'

He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was able to rub the calves of his legs in the pause he made.

`When that person discloses,' said Mr Jaggers, straightening himself, `you and that person will settle your own affairs. When that person discloses, my part in this business will cease and determine. When that person discloses, it will not be necessary for me to know anything about it. And that's all I have got to say.'

We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the notion that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not taken him into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella; that he resented this, and felt a jealousy about it; or that he really did object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it. When I raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly looking at me all the time, and was doing so still.

`If that is all you have to say, sir,' I remarked, `there can be nothing left for me to say.'

He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded watch, and asked me where I was going to dine? I replied at my own chambers, with Herbert. As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he would favour us with his company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he insisted on walking home with me, in order that I might make no extra preparation for him, and first he had a letter or two to write, and (of course) had his hands to wash. So, I said I would go into the outer office and talk to Wemmick.