who was induced to accept the arrangement through sympathy with her
cousin, and the hope of removing him from the paralysing influence of
his father. The marriage was almost immediately followed by the death of
both Catherine's father and her boyish husband, who, it was afterwards
found, had been coaxed or threatened into bequeathing all his property
to his father. Thus ended Mrs. Dean's story of how the strangely
assorted occupants of Wuthering Heights had come together, my landlord
Heathcliff, the disinherited, poor Hareton Earnshaw, and Catherine
Heathcliff, who had been Catherine Linton and the daughter of Catherine
Earnshaw. I propose riding over to Wuthering Heights to inform my
landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London, and that he
may look out for another tenant for the Grange.

_III.--The Story Runs Forward_

Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty, and I went to the Heights as I
proposed. My housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to
her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not
conscious of anything odd in her request. Hareton Earnshaw unchained the
gate for me. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen, but he
does his best, apparently, to make the least of his advantages.
Catherine, who was preparing vegetables for a meal, looked more sulky
and less spirited than when I had seen her first.

"She does not seem so amiable," I thought, "as Mrs. Dean would persuade
me to believe. She's a beauty, it is true, but not an angel."

I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden, and dropped
Mrs. Dean's note on her knee unnoticed by Hareton. But she asked aloud,
"What is that?" and chucked it off.

"A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange," I
answered. She would gladly have gathered it up at this information, but
Hareton beat her. He seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr.
Heathcliff should look at it first; but later he pulled out the letter,
and flung it on the floor as ungraciously as he could. Catherine perused
it eagerly, and then asked, "Does Ellen like you?"

"Yes, very well," I replied hesitatingly.

Whereupon she became more communicative, and told me how dull she was
now Heathcliff had taken her books away.

When Heathcliff came in, looking restless and anxious, he sent her to
the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the
house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton abs