ove him only that he might
persuade her to give him great sums of money.

The marriage day finally was fixed, her wedding-clothes were bought, the
house was decorated for the ceremony, the bride-cake was put on the
table in the dining-room and the guests arrived. But Compeyson, the
bridegroom, did not come.

Miss Havisham was dressing for the wedding when she received a cruel
note from him telling her he did not intend to marry her. She had put on
her white wedding gown and her lace veil and one of her satin
slippers--the other lay on the dressing-table. It was exactly twenty
minutes to nine o'clock when she read the note.

She fainted and afterward lay for a long time ill. When she recovered
she laid the whole place waste. She never afterward let the light of day
into the old mansion. The shutters were closed, candles were kept always
lighted, and all the clocks in the house were stopped at exactly twenty
minutes to nine o'clock. Not a thing in any room was changed. The
bride-cake rotted on the table, the decorations faded on the walls, and
day after day Miss Havisham sat in the dressing-room clad in her wedding
gown and veil, with one slipper on, the dead flowers on her table and
the trunks for her wedding journey scattered about half-packed. In time
she became shrunken and old and the white satin and lace became faded
yellow, but she never varied this habit of life.

Soon after her love disappointment she had written to her lawyer in
London, who was named Jaggers, asking him to find a baby girl for her
to adopt as her own. Now Mr. Jaggers had just defended in court a man
named Abel Magwitch, the tool of Compeyson, who had broken Miss
Havisham's heart. Compeyson had tempted Magwitch into passing some
stolen money and they had both been arrested. At the trial Compeyson
(sneak and liar as he was!) threw all the blame on his comrade, who was
duller and less sharp than he, and as a consequence, while Compeyson got
a light sentence, Magwitch, though really the more innocent of the two,
had been sent to the prison-ship for a term of many years. These two
men, by the way, were the pair who escaped from the hulks into the
marshes. Magwitch was Pip's convict of the churchyard, and Compeyson was
the one he had dragged back to capture. This Magwitch, at the time of
his arrest, had a baby daughter, who had fallen into Mr. Jaggers's care,
and in answer to Miss Havisham's request the lawyer had sent the little
girl to her, tell