Chapter 6 — Wuthering Heights

Hindley comes home from college for the funeral with a wife he never told his father about: Frances, poor in name and money, delighted by the farmhouse except the burial, terrified of mourners and death. Nelly tells Lockwood they do not take to foreigners unless the foreigners take to them first. Hindley is changed: spare, sallow, and on his first day he quarters Joseph and Nelly in the back-kitchen and claims the house. A few words from Frances against Heathcliff revive Hindley's old hatred; Heathcliff is driven to outdoor labour, stripped of the curate's lessons, and flogged or starved when he and Cathy skip church. They live on the moors anyway, growing wilder while Nelly watches, afraid to speak.

One Sunday, banished from the sitting-room for noise, they vanish. Hindley bolts the doors. Nelly hears Heathcliff return alone in the rain. He and Cathy had spied through the Thrushcross Grange window at Edgar and Isabella shrieking over a lapdog while the room blazed with crimson and gold. They laughed; the Lintons set Skulker on them. Cathy fell, bitten, and would not scream; Heathcliff fought the dog with a stone. The Lintons carried her in, called Heathcliff a gipsy castaway and wicked boy, and turned him out. Cathy stays at the Grange to heal.

Nelly warns there will be more come of this than Heathcliff reckons. Hindley rages; Mr. Linton visits and lectures him on his household. Heathcliff escapes a flogging but is forbidden to speak to Cathy; Frances promises to restrain her when she returns, by art rather than force.