She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at such a stretch that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would long ago have relaxed to the feebleness of Linton's.

When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors I should meet her coming in.

When I went from home I hastened to return; she _must_ be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain! And when I slept in her chamber--I was beaten out of that.

I couldn't lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a child; and I must open my lids to see.

And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night--to be always disappointed! It racked me! I've often groaned aloud, till that old rascal Joseph no doubt believed that my conscience was playing the fiend inside of me.