The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-01-07

......ssss......s.'.s..... patience, she taught her to be naughty, warned her that she could protect her self from the world only by hardening her womans heart, made her to see the world as she saw it, a distorted, evil thing that was to be fought only with it's own weapons of coldness and selfishness. So Estela was moulded as a young child, and hardened in that mould when she was a growing woman. Had she been anything less than very beautiful she would have charmed no eye, for warmth and tenderness were as lacking in her face as if 1t were a carven statue But she was most beautiful; and her very arrogance and disdain and coldness made it an jelly flashing beauty that lurea men on.
 She knew that she was to be sent into the world to wreak Miss Havisham's re- venge on men. She was to let men love her, invite them to love her, and then to cast them aside. She was to use men | for her ends as a man had used Miss ] Havsham.
 1 Before she sent Estella away on her mission. Miss Havisham, hungry to see something of her revenge in the mak- l ing, sent for a boy on the plea. that 1 she wanted him to play cards with her and wheel her around the rooms in a wheeled chair. The agent whom she charged with 1t, sent her an orphan Had who was living with his brother-in- law, Joe Gargery, the village black smith The name was Philip Pirrip, shortened to Pip.
 Miss Havisharp ordered. Pip to play cards with Estella. She said: Why, he is a common laboring boy!' but she played with him, in a contemptuous. ln- solent way that hurt him worse than If she had refused. "Is she very pretty, Pip?" asked Miss Havishana, gloating- 1y, before she dismissed him.
 He never had been ashamed of his coarse hands and coarse boots before, He had deemed Joe Gargery to be the best and most admirable man that lived. He had thought that the glow ing forge was the bravest of places, and had longed for the time when he was to be apprenticed. But when he
 
 only of Estella Her contemptuous. beautiful face was before him. He hated his coarse clothes. He wished that Joe were a gentlepsn He thought; What if Estella saw me working at the forge?"
 He had been a simple, innocent boy, with heart of faithful love for Joe, who loved him as simply in return, when he entered Miss Hayisham's sick presence that day; and he left it, pois- oned. As surely as physical contam- ination waits for him who enters all infected place of plague, so surely had the contamination of her sick and evil purpose fallen on the boy
 She had ordered him to return in a
 week, and he went eagerly, though he had hard work to keep back his tears whenever he thought of Estellas scorn.
 Week after week he came, and Miss Havisham watched them both. watched
 the boy grow to a youth and Estella
 grow to the age when she might go forth.
 Yet though she was blighting the lad, he had brought something of in- nocence and youth into her life. His humility of love for the cruel, seorn- full young beauty touched Miss Hayi- sham, almost without her conscious ness. It did not turn her from her fixed purpose, but even while she made l the lad victim. her revehge began, unknown to herself, to punish her.
 One day, when Pip, now growing to I be a young man, came into her pres ence, she said with eyes burning: You are looking for Estella! She has gone. | Pip She is a lady; prettier than ever | admired by everybody Do you feel that you have lost her?'
 | She said 1t with malignant eXulta- | tion. and dismissed him.
 And now her punishment began to work is slow sure course, Pip fell into great fortune. He went to London. and got an education and. polish, and lived in q cultured world and his dream of becoming a gentleman came true. He was glad of it only because it made him worthy of Estella. He knew now, with adult wisdom, what she was; but he could not help loving her.
 He loved her all the more, it seemed 10 him, because of his open eyes. He knew that he loved her against all