`Nothing but what I can bear,' he replied; `and with the greatest pleasure, provided you'll leave me alone; get in, and don't annoy me.'

I obeyed: and, in passing, I noticed he breathed as fast as a cat.

`Yes!' I reflected to myself, `we shall have a fit of illness. I cannot conceive what he has been doing.'

That noon he sat down to dinner with us, and received a heaped-up plate from my hands, as if he intended to make amends for previous fasting.

`I've neither cold nor fever, Nelly,' he remarked, in allusion to my morning's speech; `and I'm ready to do justice to the food you give me.

He took his knife and fork, and was going to commence eating, when the inclination appeared to become suddenly extinct. He laid them on the table, looked eagerly towards the window, then rose and went out. `We saw him walking to and fro in the garden while we concluded our meal, and Earnshaw said he'd go and ask why he would not dine: he thought we had grieved him some way.

`Well, is he coming?' cried Catherine, when her cousin returned.

`Nay,' he answered; `but he's not angry: he seemed rare and pleased indeed; only I made him impatient by speaking to him twice; and then he bid me be off to you: he wondered how I could want the company of anybody else.'

I set his plate to keep warm on the fender; and after an hour or two he re-entered, when the room was clear, in no degree calmer: the same unnatural--it was unnatural--appearance of joy under his black brows; the same bloodless hue, and his teeth visible, now and then, in a kind of smile; his frame shivering, not as one shivers with chill or weakness, but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates--a strong thrilling, rather than trembling.

I will ask what is the matter, I thought; or who should? And I exclaimed:

`Have you heard any good news, Mr Heathcliff? You look uncommonly animated.'

`Where should good news come from to me?' he said. `I'm animated with hunger; and, seemingly, I must not eat.'

`Your dinner is here,' I returned; `why won't you get it?'

`I don't want it now;' he muttered hastily; `I'll wait till supper. And, Nelly, once for all, let me beg you to warn Hareton and the other away from me. I wish to be troubled by nobody: I wish to have this place to myself.'

`Is there some new reason for this banishment?' I inquired. `Tell me why you are so queer, Mr Heathcliff? `Where were you last night? I'm not putting the question through idle curiosity, but--'

`You are putting the question through very idle curiosity,' he interrupted, with a laugh. `Yet I'll answer it. Last night I was on the threshold of hell. Today, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me! And now you'd better go! You'll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you, if you refrain from prying.'

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