Wuthering Bites. Sarah Gray

will excuse me.’

      ‘I hate you to be fidgeting in my presence,’ exclaimed the young lady.

      ‘I’m sorry for it, Miss Catherine,’ was my response, and I proceeded with my occupation.

      She, supposing Edgar could not see her, snatched the cloth from my hand, and pinched me, with a prolonged wrench, very spitefully on the arm.

      I’ve said I did not love her and besides, she hurt me, so I screamed out.

      ‘Oh, miss, that’s a nasty trick! You have no right to nip me.’

      ‘I didn’t touch you, you lying creature!’ she cried, her fingers tingling to repeat the act, her ears red with rage. She never had power to conceal her passion; it always set her whole complexion in a blaze.

      ‘What’s that, then?’ I retorted, showing a decided purple welt on my arm.

      She stamped her foot, wavered a moment, and then slapped me on the cheek, a stinging blow that filled both my eyes with water.

      ‘Catherine, love! Catherine!’ interposed Linton, greatly shocked at the violence that his idol had committed.

      ‘Leave the room, Nelly!’ she repeated, trembling all over.

      Little Hareton, who followed me everywhere, and was sitting near me on the floor, commenced crying himself, and sobbed out complaints against ‘wicked Aunt Cathy,’ which drew her fury. She seized his shoulders and shook him, and when Linton reached out to interrupt, she boxed him in the ear.

      He drew back in consternation. I lifted Hareton in my arms and walked off to the kitchen with him, but still watched through the doorway.

      Linton moved to the spot where he had laid his hat.

      ‘Where are you going?’ demanded Catherine, advancing to the door.

      He swerved aside and attempted to pass.

      ‘You must not go!’

      ‘I must and shall!’ he replied in a subdued voice.

      ‘No,” she persisted. ‘Not yet, Edgar Linton!’

      ‘How can I stay after you have struck me?’ asked Linton. ‘Next thing I know, you’ll be setting your companion beasties after me.’

      Catherine was mute.

      ‘You’ve made me afraid and ashamed of you,’ he continued. ‘I’ll not come here again!’

      Her eyes began to glisten. ‘Well, go, if you please—get away! And now I’ll cry—I’ll cry myself sick!’ She dropped down on her knees by a chair, and set to weeping in serious earnest.

      Edgar persevered in his resolution as far as the court; there he lingered. But then, still hearing her weeping, he turned abruptly, hastened into the house again, and shut the door behind him.

      When I went in a while after to inform them that Earnshaw had come home rabid drunk with several acquaintances in black cloaks bearing fangs, I saw the quarrel had merely instigated a closer intimacy. Linton had broken the outworks of youthful timidity, and that enabled them to forsake the disguise of friendship, and confess themselves lovers.