And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air upon him
of general lying by in consequence of information he possessed, that
really was too much for me. He cross-examined his very wine when he had
nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and the candle, tasted
the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it, looked at his
glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, filled again, and
cross-examined the glass again, until I was as nervous as if I had known
the wine to be telling him something to my disadvantage. Three or four
times I feebly thought I would start conversation; but whenever he saw
me going to ask him anything, he looked at me with his glass in his
hand, and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as if requesting me to
take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn't answer.
I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved her
in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing off her
cap,--which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin mop,--and
strewing the ground with her hair,--which assuredly had never grown
on her head. She did not appear when we afterwards went up to Miss
Havisham's room, and we four played at whist. In the interval, Miss
Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of the most beautiful jewels
from her dressing-table into Estella's hair, and about her bosom and
arms; and I saw even my guardian look at her from under his thick
eyebrows, and raise them a little, when her loveliness was before him,
with those rich flushes of glitter and color in it.
Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into custody, and
came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, before which the
glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say nothing; nor, of
the feeling that I had, respecting his looking upon us personally in the
light of three very obvious and poor riddles that he had found out long
ago. What I suffered from, was the incompatibility between his cold
presence and my feelings towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could
never bear to speak to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to
hear him creak his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see
him wash his hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be within
a foot or two of him,--it was, that my feelings should be in the same
place with him,--that, was the agonizing circumstance.