are
two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that mine is the
Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to have a carriage, and
you are to take me. This is my purse, and you are to pay my charges out
of it. O, you must take the purse! We have no choice, you and I, but to
obey our instructions. We are not free to follow our own devices, you
and I."

As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an
inner meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but not with
displeasure.

"A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella. Will you rest here a
little?"

"Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea, and you
are to take care of me the while."

She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I requested a
waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who had never seen
such a thing in his life, to show us a private sitting-room. Upon that,
he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a magic clew without which he
couldn't find the way up stairs, and led us to the black hole of the
establishment, fitted up with a diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous
article, considering the hole's proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet,
and somebody's pattens. On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into
another room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched
leaf of a copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked at this
extinct conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order; which,
proving to be merely, "Some tea for the lady," sent him out of the room
in a very low state of mind.

I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its strong
combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one to infer that
the coaching department was not doing well, and that the enterprising
proprietor was boiling down the horses for the refreshment department.
Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it. I thought that
with her I could have been happy there for life. (I was not at all happy
there at the time, observe, and I knew it well.)

"Where are you going to, at Richmond?" I asked Estella.

"I am going to live," said she, "at a great expense, with a lady there,
who has the power--or says she has--of taking me about, and introducing
me, and showing people to me and showing me to people."

"I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

She answered so carelessly, that I said, "You speak