Nelly tells Edgar that Isabella is at Wuthering Heights and seeks his forgiveness. Nelly goes to Wuthering Heights on her own as Edgar refuses to see his sister, explaining: “I am not angry, but I’m sorry to have lost her” (106). Nelly observes upon her arrival that Isabella looks unhealthy, but Heathcliff appears to be thriving. Nelly tells Heathcliff that Catherine is recovering and warns him to leave her alone, but he insists that he will see her and that “for every thought she spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on [him]” (107). In Isabella’s presence, he rants to Nelly about his annoyance with Isabella for having romanticized him. Despite Nelly’s repeated refusals, Heathcliff eventually forces her to arrange a meeting between him and Catherine.

Nelly interrupts herself, promising Lockwood she will pick her story up in the morning. Lockwood wonders if he should fall in love with Catherine Heathcliff, given who her mother was.

Lockwood writes that he has now heard the entire story from Nelly. He desires to repeat her story, in a condensed version and in her own words. In the days leading up to Catherine’s death, Nelly observes an “unearthly beauty in the change” in Catherine’s appearance (113). Nelly gives Catherine a letter from Heathcliff and tells Catherine that Heathcliff wants to see her. When he comes in from the garden, he embraces Catherine for five minutes, kissing her repeatedly. While they blame each other for their tortured lives, Nelly observes that, “to a cool spectator, [they] [make] a strange and fearful picture” (115). Catherine declares that she will find no peace in death, and soon, they are locked in an embrace that Nelly cannot imagine them relinquishing. Heathcliff begs Catherine to tell him why she betrayed him for Edgar as Catherine begs him for forgiveness. Nelly witnesses all and warns them that Edgar will soon be arriving home. Edgar enters the room as Heathcliff holds Catherine, who seems near death. Heathcliff leaves but waits in the garden.

Baby Catherine Linton is born two months early, and her mother dies two hours later. Edgar mourns the death of Catherine, as does Heathcliff, who responds angrily when Nelly tells him the news: “May she wake in torment!” (121). Heathcliff’s hostile tone changes when, moments later, he begs for the ghost of Catherine to haunt him: “Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!” (122). In front of Nelly, he throws himself against a tree trunk in violent angst, and Nelly observes splashes of blood on the bark.

Later, Heathcliff visits Catherine in her coffin in the drawing-room of Thrushcross Grange and takes Edgar’s hair out of the locket around her neck, replacing it with his own. Hindley does not attend her funeral, and Isabella is not invited. Her body is buried near the moor instead of in a chapel or with the Linton family.

A few days later, Nelly senses an intruder in the house, who turns out to be Isabella Heathcliff, in soaking wet clothes and bleeding from a cut under her ear. Nelly binds the wound, and Isabella throws her wedding ring into the fire. Nelly calms her as they listen to the baby wailing, and Isabella expresses her desire to leave Wuthering Heights and return to the Grange. Isabella describes her plan to leave Heathcliff; the bad behavior by Heathcliff and Hindley since the death of Catherine has driven her away. Isabella explains what happened to Nelly: Hindley told Isabella of his intention to kill Heathcliff, so she decided to warn Heathcliff. Hindley overheard Heathcliff, and while they wrestled, Hindley’s gun went off, and he cut his hand with his own knife. Isabella searched for Joseph as Heathcliff tended to the wound. Heathcliff left once he was sure that Hindley was alive. The next morning, Isabella saw Heathcliff, “his lips devoid of their ferocious sneer, and sealed in an expression of unspeakable sadness” (130). She took the opportunity to feel satisfied at his pain and “taste the delight of paying wrong for wrong” (131). 

After Isabella tells her story, she moves to London, where she gives birth to a son a few months later, named Linton Heathcliff. Isabella dies about 13 years after Catherine, when Linton is twelve.

In the meantime, both Hindley and Edgar mourn their many losses. Hindley ultimately dies from alcohol intoxication and in debt to Heathcliff, which means that Heathcliff inherits Wuthering Heights, and Hareton Earnshaw has nothing.