[Great Expectations by Charles Dickens]@TWC D-Link book
Great Expectations

ChapterXXXVIII
7/19

"You cold, cold heart!" "What ?" said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her eyes; "do you reproach me for being cold?
You ?" "Are you not ?" was the fierce retort.
"You should know," said Estella.

"I am what you have made me.

Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me." "O, look at her, look at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!" "At least I was no party to the compact," said Estella, "for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do.

But what would you have?
You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you.

What would you have ?" "Love," replied the other.
"You have it." "I have not," said Miss Havisham.
"Mother by adoption," retorted Estella, never departing from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness,--"mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you.


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