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.
“ ‘I cannot commit murder,’ I replied. ‘ Mr. Hindley stands sentinel with a knife and loaded pistol.’
“ ‘Let me in by the kitchen door,’ he said.
“ ‘Hindley will be there before me,’ I answered: ‘and that’s a poor love of yours that cannot bear a shower of