- Now that her master is dead, Nelly hopes to stay at the Grange. Heathcliff has other plans, storming into the house as its new master. He announces immediately his intention of bringing Cathy home to the Heights despite her desire to stay at the Grange with Nelly.
- Ever since Linton helped Cathy escape, Heathcliff has punished him with his very presence. Heathcliff has a plan to rent out the Grange and needs Cathy at Wuthering Heights to help around the house.
- Heathcliff and Cathy argue over Linton: she claims he is all she loves in the world; Heathcliff announces Linton's intention to be an abusive husband.
- In his sorrow and rage, Heathcliff briefly takes over the narrative. Heathcliff tells Nelly that he persuaded the sexton to dig up Catherine's grave. He stares at her dusty corpse and bribes the sexton to put his body next to hers when he dies. He has no fear of disturbing the dead, he tells Nelly. Cathy has been haunting him for eighteen years.
- He continues, "You know I was wild after she died, and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying her to return to me—her spirit. I have a strong faith in ghosts; I have a conviction that they can, and do exist, among us!" (29.24).
- He tells Nelly that the day after Catherine died, eighteen years ago, he visited her grave and felt her presence there. He then ran home into her old bedroom. "I felt her by me" (30.30), he says, and has ever since. Seeing her corpse the day before provided a strange feeling of solace.
- Heathcliff returns to the present. He takes down Catherine's portrait from over the hearth at the Grange and tells Nelly to send it to the Heights. He leaves with Cathy.