These words, written by Charlotte Brontë in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter IV., in relation to herself and "Mrs. Reed," give us an insight into her extraordinary alternations of mood. To inquire deeply into her determining initially to disavow the authorship of _Wuthering Heights_ requires a somewhat ruthless baring of the "fiendish" vindictiveness against M. Héger between the dates of 1844-46, that was a characteristic of the portrayals of him I have mentioned; but it also reveals her active turn to a spirit of repentance for past vindictive feeling, the which she acknowledges to have known. It seems that it was in a spirit of reproach Charlotte Brontë wrote the vengeful scene between Heathcliffe and Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_, harsh in threat almost as her poem "Gilbert," wherein the man, satisfied with the affections of his wife and children, has banished the remembrance of her of whom he boasted--"She loved me more than life," and who is made to say, before her spirit in the form of a white-clad spectre comes to him:-- "As I am busied now, I could not turn from such pursuit To weep a broken vow." Thus in _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter XV., when Catherine is embraced by Heathcliffe, she says bitterly:-- "I wish I could hold you till we were both dead! I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say ... 'That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her; I shall be sorry that I must lose them!' Will you say so, Heathcliffe?" Well might Catherine deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her, unless with her mortal body she cast away her mortal character also. [See my footnote in the foregoing chapter, on Catherine's dream that the angels flung her out of heaven.] Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness.... "Are you possessed with a devil," he pursued savagely, "to talk in that manner to me when you are dying?" And later, as though in answer to the apparent threat of the poem "Gilbert," wherein, as I have said, the spectre of the woman who has died broken-hearted through the neglect of her married lover haunts him and drives him mad, Heathcliffe, in the words of that poem, "Wild as one whom demons seize," cries:-- "Catherine Earnshaw ... you said I killed you--haunt me then! The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad!"