"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must marry."

"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. I have so
settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I am already
quite an old bachelor."

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her lips, and
then put the good matronly hand with which she had touched it into mine.
There was something in the action, and in the light pressure of Biddy's
wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence in it.

"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you don't fret for her?"

"O no,--I think not, Biddy."

"Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?

"My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a
foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But that
poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy,--all gone
by!"

Nevertheless, I knew, while I said those words, that I secretly intended
to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for her sake.
Yes, even so. For Estella's sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being
separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, and who
had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice, brutality,
and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her husband, from an
accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse. This release had
befallen her some two years before; for anything I knew, she was married
again.