"Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham."

     She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers as she sat in the chair. "Love her, love her, love her! How does she use you?"

     Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a question at all) she repeated, "Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces,--and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper,--love her, love her, love her!"

     Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm round my neck swell with the vehemence that possessed her.

     "Hear me, Pip! I adopted her, to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!"

     She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead of love--despair--revenge--dire death--it could not have sounded from her lips more like a curse.