Wuthering Heights

her hand with pain. »Begone, for God's sake, and hide your vixen face! How foolish to reveal those talons to
him!
Can't you fancy the conclusions he'll draw? Look, Heathcliff! they are instruments that will do execution – you must beware of your eyes.«
    »I'd wrench them off her fingers, if they ever menaced me,« he answered, brutally, when the door had closed after her. »But, what did you mean by teasing the creature in that manner, Cathy? You were not speaking the truth, were you?«
    »I assure you I was,« she returned. »She has been pining for your sake several weeks; and raving about you this morning, and pouring forth a deluge of abuse, because I represented your failings in a plain light for the purpose of mitigating her adoration. But don't notice it further. I wished to punish her sauciness, that's all – I like her too well, my dear Heathcliff, to let you absolutely seize and devour her up.«
    »And I like her too ill to attempt it,« said he, »except in a very ghoulish fashion. You'd hear of odd things, if I lived alone with that mawkish, waxen face; the most ordinary would be painting on its white the colours of the rainbow, and turning the blue eyes, black, every day or two; they detestably resemble Linton's.«
    »Delectably,« observed Catherine. »They are dove's eyes – angel's!«
    »She's her brother's heir, is she not?« he asked, after a brief silence.
    »I should be sorry to think so,« returned his companion. »Half-a-dozen nephews shall erase her title, please Heaven! Abstract your mind from the subject, at present – you are too prone to covet your neighbour's goods: remember
this
neighbour's goods are mine.«
    »If they were
mine,
they would be none the less that,« said Heathcliff, »but though Isabella Linton may be silly, she is scarcely mad; and – in short we'll dismiss the matter as you advise.«
    From their tongues, they did dismiss it; and Catherine, probably, from her thoughts. The other, I felt certain, recalled it often in the course of the evening; I saw him smile to himself – grin rather – and lapse into ominous musing whenever Mrs. Linton had occasion to be absent from the apartment.
    I determined to watch his movements. My heart invariably cleaved to the master's, in preference to Catherine's side; with reason, I imagined, for he was kind, and trustful, and honourable: and she – she could not be called the
opposite,
yet, she seemed to allow herself such wide latitude, that I had little faith in her principles, and still less sympathy for her feelings. I wanted something to happen which might have the effect of freeing both Wuthering Heights and the Grange of Mr. Heathcliff, quietly, leaving us as we had been prior to his advent. His visits were a continual nightmare to me; and, I suspected, to my master also. His abode at the Heights was an oppression past explaining. I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy.
     

 
Chapter XI
    Sometimes, while meditating on these things in solitude, I've got up in a sudden terror, and put on my bonnet to go see how all was at the farm; I've persuaded my conscience that it was a duty to warn him how people talked regarding his ways; and then I've recollected his confirmed bad habits, and, hopeless of benefiting him, have flinched from re-entering the dismal house, doubting if I could bear to be taken at my word.
    One time, I passed the old gate, going out of my way, on a journey to Gimmerton. It was about the period that my narrative has reached – a bright, frosty afternoon; the ground bare, and the road hard and dry.
    I came to a stone where the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand; a rough sand-pillar, with the letters W.H. cut on its north side, on the east, G., and on the south-west, T.G. It serves as guide-post to the Grange, Heights, and village. The sun shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child's sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite spot twenty years before.
    I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things – and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head