present himself. 'You may come and wish Miss Catharine welcome, like the other servants.' Cathy, catching a glimpse of her friend in his concealment, flew to embrace him, she bestowed seven or eight kisses on his cheek within the second, and then stopped, and, drawing back, burst into a laugh, exclaiming: 'Why, how very black and cross you look! and how—how funny and grim! But that's because I'm used to Edgar and Isabella Linton.'
"'Well, Heathcliff, have you forgotten me? Shake hands, Heathcliff,' said Mr. Earnshaw, condescendingly, ’once in a way, that is permitted.'
"'I shall not,' replied the boy, finding his tongue at last. 'I shall not stand to be laughed at. I shall not bear it.'"
From this time Catharine's friendship with Heathcliff was chequered by intermittent jealousy on his side and intermittent disgust upon hers; and for this evil turn, far more than for any coarser brutality, Heathcliff longed for revenge on Hindley Earnshaw. Meanwhile Edgar Linton, greatly smitten with the beautiful Catharine, went from time to time to visit at Wuthering Heights. He would have gone far oftener, but that he had a terror of Hindley Earnshaw's reputation, and shrank from encountering him.
For this fine young Oxford gentleman, this proud young husband, was sinking into worse excesses than any of his wild Earnshaw ancestors. A defiant sorrow had driven him to desperation. In the summer following Catharine's visit to Thushcross Grange, his only son and heir had been born. An occasion of great rejoicings, suddenly dashed by the discovery that his wife, his idol, was fast sinking in consumption. Hindley refused to believe it, and his wife kept her flighty spirits till the
