It was in January 1844 when Charlotte Brontë returned finally from Brussels; and she and her sisters printed a circular in connection with a project of starting a private school at Haworth, but no progress was made. Charlotte Brontë's life at this period will be better understood by a reference to the chapters on "The Recoil" in this work--it was her darkest time: when the human in her cried out--as it has, alas! in so many at the bitter hour. She rebelled. Not violently; but by reproach. Only her own pen can tell how cruelly she suffered mentally. She had done no wrong and had resisted a great evil, but the recoil found her weak: it was the martyrdom of virtue. She was suffering for the sake of right; and that she cried aloud as in an agony showed her suffering was intense. The storm left the world _Wuthering Heights_. The tone of ribald caricature in dealing with the Pharisee Joseph; the impatient, vindictive pilloring of her own nervous and physical infirmities as "Catherine"; the ruthless baring of the flesh to show "Heathcliffe's" heart was stone; the wilful plunging into an atmosphere of harsh levity, crude animalism, and repulsive hypochondria, all contributed to a sombre and powerful work of art grand in its perpetration, standing alone in solemn majesty like the black rack that stretches low athwart a clear sky--the rearward of the storm. But it bears the story of a sad Night, and Charlotte Brontë's subsequent works were written in repentance: for in Heathcliffe and Catherine of _Wuthering Heights_ she had portrayed M. Héger and herself. In this dark hour of Charlotte Brontë's life, Emily Brontë, to whom she afterwards gave _Wuthering Heights_, was writing, on July 30th, 1845,[8] that she, Emily, was "contented and undesponding," and was engaged upon and intended to continue some puerile compositions called _The Gondal Chronicles_, which she spoke of as "delighting" her and Anne. She and Anne had been engaged upon this effort three and a half years, and it was yet unfinished. While making comparison between Emily's and Charlotte's standpoint at this time--and Charlotte obtained for herself the names of Currer Bell from Montagu's book which, as I show, contained the "plot," etc., of _Wuthering Heights_, for her own use in the Brontë poem publishing project of 1845-46--it is most important to note that but some months after Emily's diary entry _Wuthering Heights_ was offered by Charlotte to Messrs. Aylott and Jones, with _The Professor_ and _Agnes Grey_--on April 6th, 1846. The literal evidence of _The Key to the Brontë Works_ does not require that we ask by what miracle the "contented" Emily Brontë, who had collaborated three and a half years with Anne on _The Gondal Chronicles_, and declared an intention at the end of July 1845 to "stick firmly" to their composition, could come, in addition to preparing her poems for the press, to begin and to finish _Wuthering Heights_ by or before April 6th, 1846.[9]