“You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?” he said. “Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me! At a most miserable period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it haunted me on my return to the neighbourhood last summer; but only her own assurance could make me admit the horrible idea again. And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt. Two words would comprehend my future—death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton’s attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have: the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole affection be monopolised by him. Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse. It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?”
“Catherine and Edgar are as fond of each other as any two people can be,” cried Isabella, with sudden vivacity. “No one has a right to talk in that manner, and I won’t hear my brother depreciated in silence!”
“Your brother is wondrous fond of you too, isn’t he?” observed Heathcliff, scornfully. “He turns you adrift on the world with surprising alacrity.”
“He is not aware of what I suffer,” she replied. “I didn’t tell him that.”
“You have been telling him something, then: you have written, have you?”
“To say that I was married, I did write—you saw the note.”
“And nothing since?”
“No.”
“My young lady is looking sadly the worse for her change of condition,” I remarked. “Somebody’s love comes short in her case, obviously; whose, I may guess; but, perhaps, I shouldn’t say.”
“I should guess it was her own,” said Heathcliff. “She degenerates into a mere slut! She is tired of trying to please me uncommonly early. You’d hardly credit it, but the very morrow of our wedding she was weeping to go home. However, she’ll suit this house so much the better for not being over nice, and I’ll take care she does not disgrace me by rambling abroad.”