Comment on this quotation ”i knew not how to answer or how to comfort her " Interpret the character of Miss Havisham as described by Pip

The cruelty of Miss. Havisham's actions seems to have finally hit her, and she breaks down, crying "What have I done!" and even falls to her knees before Pip and begs his forgiveness.

Perhaps it is because Estella has really married Drummle, the brute, that Miss Havisham seems to be cracking in her stony resolve. At any rate, Pip is disturbed by the old woman's drama:

"I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had done a grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mould into the form that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride, found vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker; I knew equally well." Chapter 49, pg. 465

Pip assures Miss Havisham that she may clear him out of her conscience, but Estella, he says, is another matter. He asks her a few questions about Estella, and how she came into Miss Havisham's care, and the old woman's answers confirm his suspicions that Estella is Molly's daughter.