"At any rate," said I, "I have no warning given me just now, for you wrote to me to come to you, this time."

     "That's true," said Estella, with a cold careless smile that always chilled me.

     After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, she went on to say:--

     "The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes to have me for a day at Satis. You are to take me there, and bring me back, if you will. She would rather I did not travel alone, and objects to receiving my maid, for she has a sensitive horror of being talked of by such people. Can you take me?"

     "Can I take you, Estella!"

     "You can then? The day after to-morrow, if you please. You are to pay all charges out of my purse, You hear the condition of your going?"

     "And must obey," said I.

     This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for others like it; Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I ever so much as seen her handwriting. We went down on the next day but one, and we found her in the room where I had first beheld her, and it is needless to add that there was no change in Satis House.