“I might as well have struggled with a bear, or reasoned with a lunatic. The only resource left me was to run to a lattice and warn his intended victim of the fate which awaited him.
“ ‘You’d better seek shelter somewhere else tonight!’ I exclaimed, in rather a triumphant tone. ‘ Mr. Earnshaw has a mind to shoot you, if you persist in endeavouring to enter.’
“ ‘You’d better open the door, you ⸻’ he answered, addressing me by some elegant term that I don’t care to repeat.
“ ‘I shall not meddle in the matter,’ I retorted again. ‘Come in and get shot, if you please. I’ve done my duty.’
“With that I shut the window and returned to my place by the fire; having too small a stock of hypocrisy at my command to pretend any anxiety for the danger that menaced him. Earnshaw swore passionately at me: affirming that I loved the villain yet; and calling me all sorts of names for the base spirit I evinced. And I, in my secret heart (and conscience never reproached me), thought what a blessing it would be for him should Heathcliff put him out of misery; and what a blessing for me should he send Heathcliff to his right abode! As I sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind me was banged on to the floor by a blow from the latter individual, and his black countenance looked blightingly through. The stanchions stood too close to suffer his shoulders to follow, and I smiled, exulting in my fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark.
“ ‘Isabella, let me in, or I’ll make you repent!’ he ‘girned,’ as Joseph calls it.