Wuthering Heights: Chapters 11–15

Fit to cry, I took an orange from my pocket, and offered it to propitiate him.

‘He might spare himself the trouble,’ said Heathcliff: ‘I could do as well without his approbation...'

‘That’s not the plan. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them. You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style, and refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace, don’t erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I’d cut my throat!’

‘I’ve been so far forbearing with you, sir,’ he said quietly; ‘not that I was ignorant of your miserable, degraded character, but I felt you were only partly responsible for that; and Catherine wishing to keep up your acquaintance, I acquiesced—foolishly..."

Heathcliff measured the height and breadth of the speaker with an eye full of derision.

Mr. Linton stood looking at her in sudden compunction and fear.

I swept it along the carpet, and then memory burst in: my late anguish was swallowed in a paroxysm of despair.

...hour after hour he would sit beside her, tracing the gradual return to bodily health, and flattering his too sanguine hopes with the illusion that her mind would settle back to its right balance also, and she would soon be entirely her former self.

Mr. Earnshaw vouchsafed no answer.

He made no reply to this adjuration; only plodding doggedly down the wooden steps, and halting, before an apartment which, from that halt and the superior quality of its furniture, I conjectured to be the best one.

As soon as I had perused this epistle I went to the master, and informed him that his sister had arrived at the Heights, and sent me a letter expressing her sorrow for Mrs. Linton’s situation, and her ardent desire to see him; with a wish that he would transmit to her, as early as possible, some token of forgiveness by me.

‘He turns you adrift on the world with surprising alacrity.’

It was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to discover that I did not love her.

Tell your master, Nelly, that I never, in all my life, met with such an abject thing as she is.

I fear it was wrong, though expedient.