Months later, Lockwood visits a friend in the North and finds himself unexpectedly near Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. He drops by the Grange looking for Nelly and learns that she is now living up at Wuthering Heights. When Lockwood arrives at Wuthering Heights, he notices “a fragrance of stocks and wall flowers, wafted on the air, from amongst the homely fruit trees” (222). Lockwood hears voices from an open window, and he eavesdrops, “being moved thereto by a mingled sense of curiosity, and envy that grew as [he] lingered” (223). Cathy, in her “smiting beauty” (223),is teaching Hareton to read; “[h]is handsome features glowed with pleasure” (223) under Cathy’s tutelage. Lockwood finds Nelly, and she tells him that Heathcliff has died.

Nelly tells him the whole story, beginning from two weeks after Nelly was left behind at the Grange. She had been summoned to Wuthering Heights, which she “obeyed joyfully, for Catherine’s sake” (225). Cathy was confined to the immediate premises at the time, and she was restless and unhappy, arguing with Joseph and ignoring Hareton or goading him with insults. Soon, Nelly notices that Cathy is “sorry for his persevering sulkiness and indolence” (226) and because she had bullied him into giving up on self-improvement, she set “her ingenuity[.