“Now,” said he, “you shall live here and have a school.  You shall employ yourself while I am away; you shall think of me; you shall mind your health and happiness for my sake, and when I come back——­”

I touched his hand with my lips.  Royal to me had been its bounty.

And now three years are past.  M. Emanuel’s return is fixed.  He is to be with me ere the mists of November come.  My school flourishes; my house is ready.

But the skies hang full and dark—­a wrack sails from the west.  Peace, peace, Banshee—­“keening” at every window.  The storm did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks.  Peace, be still!  Oh, a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice; but when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

Here pause.  Enough is said.  Trouble no kind heart.  Leave sunny imaginations hope.  Let them picture union and a happy life.

* * * * *

EMILY BRONTE

Wuthering Heights

      “That chainless soul,” Emily Jane Bronte, was born at
     Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on August 30, 1818, and died at
     Haworth on December 19, 1848.  She will always have a place in
     English literature by reason of her one weird, powerful,
     strained novel, “Wuthering Heights,” and a few poems.  Emily
     Bronte, like her sister Charlotte, was educated at Cowan
     School and at Brussels.  For a time she became a governess, but
     it seemed impossible for her to live away from the fascination
     of the Yorkshire moors, and she went home to keep house at the
     Haworth Parsonage, while her sisters taught.  Two months after
     the publication of “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte, that is, in
     December, 1847, “Wuthering Heights,” by Emily, and “Agnes
     Grey,” by Anne, the third sister in this remarkable trio, were
     issued in one volume.  The critics, who did not discover these
     books were by women, suggested persistently that “Wuthering
     Heights” must be an immature work by Currer Bell (Charlotte). 
     A year after the publication of her novel Emily died, unaware
     of her success in achieving a lasting, if restricted, fame. 
     She was extraordinarily reserved, sensitive, and wayward, and
     lived in an imagined world of her own, morbidly influenced, no
     doubt, by the vagaries of her worthless brother Branwell.  That
     she had true genius, allied with fine strength of intellect
     and character, is the unanimous verdict of competent
     criticism, while it grieves over unfulfilled possibilities.

I.—­A Surly Brood

“Mr. Heathcliff?”

A nod was the answer.

“Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, sir.”

“Walk in.”  But the invitation, uttered with closed teeth, expressed the sentiment “Go to the deuce!” And it was not till my horse’s breast fairly pushed the barrier that he put out his hand to unchain it.  I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself as he preceded me up the causeway, calling, “Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood’s horse; and bring up some wine.”