Page:Emily Bronte (Robinson 1883).djvu/204

192 There's nobody here!' I insisted. 'It was yourself Mrs. Linton: you knew it a while since.'

Myself!' she gasped, 'and the clock is striking-twelve. It's true then! that's dreadful.'

"Her fingers clutched the clothes, and gathered them over her eyes."

This scene was the beginning of a long and fearful brain-fever, from which, owing to her husband's devoted and ceaseless care, Catharine recovered her life, but barely her reason. That hung in the balance, a touch might settle it on the side of health or of madness. Not until the beginning of this fever was Isabella's flight discovered. Her brother was too concerned with his wife's illness to feel as heart-broken as Heathcliff hoped. He was not violent against his sister, nor even angry; only, with the mild steady persistence of his nature, he refused to hold any communication with Heathcliff's wife. But when, at the beginning of Catharine's recovery, Ellen Dean received a letter from Isabella, declaring the extreme wretchedness of her life at Wuthering Heights, where Heathcliff was master now, Edgar Linton willingly accorded the servant permission to go and see his sister.

Arrived at Wuthering Heights, she found that once plentiful homestead sorely ruined and deteriorated by years of thriftless dissipation; and Isabella Linton, already metamorphosed into a wan and listless slattern, broken-spirited and pale. As a pleasant means of entertaining his wife and her old servant, Heathclift discoursed on his love for Catharine and on his conviction that she could not really care for Edgar Linton.

Catharine has a heart as deep as I have: the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough, as her whole affection monopolised by him. Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog or her