“And that she has had in a humble way, since she became my wife. You must thank yourself for what I said; for you laboured to goad me up to it. And I mean it, madam. I spoke with no profanity. I am not given to swearing. Whoever has done me this foul wrong has ruined my life, and shall pay for it with his own. Give him warning of this, if you know who he is. I have nothing more to say than that.” Fear for the moment overcame her fury. And I left that house, with the firm conviction that my misery as well as my happiness, had proceeded from it. CHAPTER XLIV. MET AGAIN. HOTCHPOT HALL has been a fine old place, as any one would say who looks at it; and it would have been a fine place still, if the owners had been of like quality. “It taketh its name,” says an old county book, “from a very ancient rule of law, that if sisters be in coparcenary, as heiresses to landed estate, and one of them hath from the same source a several estate by frank-marriage, she shall (as is just and seemly) bring that into _hotchpot_, which signifieth a mixture for a pudding, ere ever she can enjoy rights with the rest.” Whether that be correct or otherwise, is far beyond my power to say, for I know not what “frank-marriage” is—nor for the matter of that “coparcenary”—but at any rate there stands the house, which savours in some degree of a pudding, being built of many-coloured stones; and the people for several generations have taken their name from this old place. Though it stands in the midst of a flat and dreary country, with good corn-land spread among desert fens, and fewer and smaller trees than ours—for the glory of Middlesex is the noble elms—yet the house has the advantage of a fine rise towards it, and a wide and open view for many miles across the level. This gives it the air of an important mansion, and one that deserves to be kept in good repair. But for three generations now, the owners had been coming down in the world, by reason of bad times, as they themselves declared, but as anybody else would say, of their own badness. Till the last successor had scarcely the right to call himself the owner. Sir Cumberleigh Hotchpot was of good descent, if name may stand for nature, on his mother’s as well as his father’s side; for his mother had been Lady Frances Cumberleigh, the daughter of a North-country Earl. But she had brought no increase to the family estates, and had rather assisted to lessen them. And her son had pursued the same course, by gambling, and a dissipated and rambling life. It was only by sufferance now that he dwelt, when he fled from London creditors, in one wing of the old house, till some one could be found, who would take it upon a repairing lease, for it could not be sold to advantage.