`I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked her to give me some information relative to her adopted daughter, and she gave me all she possessed.'

`Did she?' said Mr Jaggers, bending forward to look at his boots and then straightening himself. `Hah! I don't think I should have done so, if I had been Miss Havisham. But she ought to know her own business best.'

`I know more of the history of Miss Havisham's adopted child, than Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother.'

Mr Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated `Mother?'

`I have seen her mother within these three days.'

`Yes?' said Mr Jaggers.

`And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more recently.'

`Yes?' said Mr Jaggers.

`Perhaps I know more of Estella's history than even you do,' said I. `I know her father too.'

A certain stop that Mr Jaggers came to in his manner - he was too self-possessed to change his manner, but he could not help its being brought to an indefinably attentive stop - assured me that he did not know who her father was. This I had strongly suspected from Provis's account (as Herbert had repeated it) of his having kept himself dark; which I pieced on to the fact that he himself was not Mr Jaggers's client until some four years later, and when he could have no reason for claiming his identity. But, I could not be sure of this unconsciousness on Mr Jaggers's part before, though I was quite sure of it now.

`So! You know the young lady's father, Pip?' said Mr Jaggers.

`Yes,' I replied, `and his name is Provis - from New South Wales.'

Even Mr Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the slightest start that could escape a man, the most carefully repressed and the soonest checked, but he did start, though he made it a part of the action of taking out his pocket-handkerchief. How Wemmick received the announcement I am unable to say, for I was afraid to look at him just then, lest Mr Jaggers's sharpness should detect that there had been some communication unknown to him between us.

`And on what evidence, Pip,' asked Mr. Jaggers, very coolly, as he paused with his handkerchief half way to his nose, `does Provis make this claim?'

`He does not make it,' said I, `and has never made it, and has no knowledge or belief that his daughter is in existence.'

For once, the powerful pocket-handkerchief failed. My reply was so unexpected that Mr Jaggers put the handkerchief back into his pocket without completing the usual performance, folded his arms, and looked with stern attention at me, though with an immovable face.

Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it; with the one reservation that I left him to infer that I knew from Miss Havisham what I in fact knew from Wemmick. I was very careful indeed as to that. Nor, did I look towards Wemmick until I had finished all I had to tell, and had been for some time silently meeting Mr Jaggers's look. When I did at last turn my eyes in Wemmick's direction, I found that he had unposted his pen, and was intent upon the table before him.


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