“How provoking you are, Kitty! There, sit down. You will get used to the idea in about five minutes. Why, there’s nothing surprising in it, I should think. Though you may have thought that I was looking higher. But I have always had my own peculiar views. I can do without money, and rank, and all that. And I have taken a real fancy to you. This is enough to prove it, don’t you think? Give us your flipper, as that old rogue says; for I mean business, upon my word I do. And I fancy it won’t stick too much in your gizzard, that the old woman rages, like a tiger, against it.” “I can scarcely believe that you mean this. It is utterly impossible; I don’t know how people take such things; but to me it is simply horrible. Never speak of it again, if you wish me to speak to you. Promise me never to speak of it again.” “Very well. Settle it so, if you like. At any rate, for the present. You have got hold of some queer ideas, I suppose. High Church crotchets, or some such rubbish. You will come to think better of it, by-and-by.” “And by the holy poker, she shall be glad to do so,” he muttered to himself when she was gone; “We will try a bold stroke, my pretty dear; and you shall come on your knees to me, to marry you.” CHAPTER XXIX. A FINE TIP. THERE were many worse men in the world even then—and the number increases with population—than the gallant Sir Cumberleigh Hotchpot. The principal source of the evil in him was that he knew not wrong from right. If he could have seen the difference, he might have been tempted by the charms of virtue; but as that pure lady had never found her way into his visiting list, it would be unfair to blame him for neglecting her. He came of good family—in one sense—and a very bad family, in another. For several generations, the Hotchpots had verified their names, by making mixture of all moral doctrine. And the air of a county, where the world is flat and oozy, may have helped to bring high and low to one dead level. That speculation is beyond the mark; though as everything is material now, it may justly be accepted in plea for him. What is more to the purpose, and less of problem, is the plain truth that evil blood was in his veins, and there had never been anything to purify it. In his early days, the influence of a strong, clear-headed, and resolute wife, lifting him into self-respect, and sweetening his paltry bitterness, might have saved him from his vile contempt, and made a decent man of him. And such a chance had once been his; but he cast it by through his own foul conduct, and it never came again. The lady married a better man, who was able to lead her, as well as be led; and the man she had escaped made a bitter grievance of his own miscarriage.