prisoned, 'you know
what your diabolical father is after, and you shall tell us, or I'll box
your ears, as he has done your cousin's.'

'Yes, Linton, you must tell,' said Catherine. 'It was for your sake I
came; and it will be wickedly ungrateful if you refuse.'

'Give me some tea, I'm thirsty, and then I'll tell you,' he answered.
'Mrs. Dean, go away. I don't like you standing over me. Now, Catherine,
you are letting your tears fall into my cup. I won't drink that. Give
me another.' Catherine pushed another to him, and wiped her face. I
felt disgusted at the little wretch's composure, since he was no longer
in terror for himself. The anguish he had exhibited on the moor subsided
as soon as ever he entered Wuthering Heights; so I guessed he had been
menaced with an awful visitation of wrath if he failed in decoying us
there; and, that accomplished, he had no further immediate fears.

'Papa wants us to be married,' he continued, after sipping some of the
liquid. 'And he knows your papa wouldn't let us marry now; and he's
afraid of my dying if we wait; so we are to be married in the morning,
and you are to stay here all night; and, if you do as he wishes, you
shall return home next day, and take me with you.'

'Take you with her, pitiful changeling!' I exclaimed. '_You_ marry? Why,
the man is mad! or he thinks us fools, every one. And do you imagine
that beautiful young lady, that healthy, hearty girl, will tie herself to
a little perishing monkey like you? Are you cherishing the notion that
anybody, let alone Miss Catherine Linton, would have you for a husband?
You want whipping for bringing us in here at all, with your dastardly
puling tricks: and--don't look so silly, now! I've a very good mind to
shake you severely, for your contemptible treachery, and your imbecile
conceit.'

I did give him a slight shaking; but it brought on the cough, and he took
to his ordinary resource of moaning and weeping, and Catherine rebuked
me.

'Stay all night? No,' she said, looking slowly round. 'Ellen, I'll burn
that door down but I'll get out.'

And she would have commenced the execution of her threat directly, but
Linton was up in alarm for his dear self again. He clasped her in his
two feeble arms sobbing:--'Won't you have me, and save me? not let me
come to the Grange? Oh, darling Catherine! you mustn't go and leave,
after all. You _must_ obey my father--you _must_!'

'I must obey my own,' she replied, '