Close to the end now

Herbert and Pip are devising a plan to get Magwitch out of London. Pip says he doesn't want the money (to Herbert), and Magwitch has told his life tale of how he ended up as he has, a wanted man. Pip goes to speak to Estella in London, she is at Havisham's. Pip goes there, has an encounter with Drummles, then when he sees Estella he finds out that she is going to marry Drummles, and never returned any of Pip's affection. Havisham begins to show signs of having a soul. Estella's only response to Pip is that he will have her out of his thoughts in a week, as if forgetting someone you loved constantly from the first day you met could be so easily done. Pip responds, "Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in  the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. ...to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. ...you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may."-Dickens, Charles Great Expectations, chapter 44.

Pip ends up leaving Havisham's and walking straight back to London. When he arrives at the gate, he receives a handwritten note from Wemmick warning him not to go home.

Oh, and during the Estella encounter, Pip attempts to arrange with Havisham that she favor Herbert, and begin to support him anonymously, since Pip is planning on denouncing all aid from Magwitch and will no longer be able to do it himself. Pip is also having more stirrings of conscience. (Oh, and we find out that it was the same scoundrel that betrayed both Havisham and Magwitch, leaving her broken at the altar and he a prisoner, now branded for death. He was the other prisoner captured on the marsh at the beginning of the novel.)