I got Miss Catherine and myself to Thrushcross Grange and, to my agreeable disappointment, she behaved infinitely better than I dared to expect. She seemed almost over-fond of Mr. Linton; and even his sister she showed plenty of affection…It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
He took a seat opposite Catherine, who kept her gaze fixed on him as if she feared he would vanish were she to remove it. He did not raise his to her often: a quick glance now and then sufficed; but it flashed back, each time more confidently, the undisguised delight he drank from hers. . . . Not so Mr. Edgar: he grew pale with pure annoyance: a feeling that reached its climax when his lady rose, and stepping across the rug, seized Heathcliff’s hands again, and laughed like one beside herself.
I wanted something to happen which might have the effect of freeing both Wuthering Heights and the Grange of Mr. Heathcliff, quietly . . . 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.
Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff as my friend—if Edgar will be mean and jealous, I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own. That will be a prompt way of finishing all, when I am pushed to extremity!
I engaged to carry a letter from him to my mistress; and should she consent, I promised to let him have intelligence of Linton’s next absence from home, when he might come . . . Was it right or wrong? I fear it was wrong, though expedient. I thought I prevented another explosion by compliance; and I thought, too, it might create a favourable crisis in Catherine’s mental illness[.]
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