Wuthering Heights

love in him what he has not?«
    »Catherine and Edgar are as fond of each other, as any two people can be!« cried Isabella with sudden vivacity. »No one has a right to talk in that manner, and I won't hear my brother depreciated in silence!«
    »Your brother is wondrous fond of you too, isn't he?« observed Heathcliff scornfully. »He turns you adrift on the world with surprising alacrity.«
    »He is not aware of what I suffer,« she replied. »I didn't tell him that.«
    »You have been telling him something, then – you have written, have you?«
    »To say that I was married, I did write – you saw the note.«
    »And nothing since?«
    »No.«
    »My young lady is looking sadly the worse for her change of condition,« I remarked. »Somebody's love comes short in her case, obviously – whose I may guess; but, perhaps, I shouldn't say.«
    »I should guess it was her own,« said Heathcliff. »She degenerates into a mere slut! She is tired of trying to please me, uncommonly early – You'd hardly credit it, but the very morrow of our wedding, she was weeping to go home. However, she'll suit this house so much the better for not being over nice, and I'll take care she does not disgrace me by rambling abroad.«
    »Well, sir;« returned I, »I hope you'll consider that Mrs. Heathcliff is accustomed to be looked after, and waited on; and that she has been brought up like an only daughter whom every one was ready to serve – You must let her have a maid to keep things tidy about her, and you must treat her kindly – Whatever be your notion of Mr. Edgar, you cannot doubt that she has a capacity for strong attachments or she wouldn't have abandoned the elegancies, and comforts, and friends of her former home, to fix contentedly, in such a wilderness as this, with you.«
    »She abandoned them under a delusion;« he answered; »picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character, and acting on the false impressions she cherished. But at last, I think she begins to know me – I don't perceive the silly smiles and grimaces that provoked me, at first; and the senseless incapability of discerning that I was in earnest when I gave her my opinion of her infatuation, and herself – It was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to discover that I did not love her. I believed at one time, no lessons could teach her that! and yet it is poorly learnt; for this morning she announced, as a piece of appalling intelligence, that I had actually succeeded in making her hate me! A positive labour of Hercules, I assure you! If it be achieved, I have cause to return thanks – Can I trust your assertion, Isabella? are you sure you hate me? If I let you alone for half-a-day, won't you come sighing and wheedling to me again? I dare say she would rather I had seemed all tenderness before you; it wounds her vanity to have the truth exposed. But, I don't care who knows that the passion was wholly on one side, and I never told her a lie about it. She cannot accuse me of showing a bit of deceitful softness. The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang up her little dog, and when she pleaded for it, the first words I uttered, were a wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging to her, except one: possibly, she took that exception for herself – But no brutality disgusted her – I suppose, she has an innate admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury! Now, was it not the depth of absurdity – of genuine idiocy, for that pitiful, slavish, mean-minded brach to dream that I could love her? Tell your master, Nelly, that I never, in all my life, met with such an abject thing as she is. – She even disgraces the name of Linton; and I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments on what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back! But tell him also, to set his fraternal and magisterial heart at ease, that I keep strictly within the limits of the law – I have avoided, up to this period, giving her the slightest right to claim a separation; and what's more, she'd thank nobody for dividing us – if she desired to go she might – the nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from tormenting her!«
    »Mr. Heathcliff,« said I, »this is the talk of a