junction line of Kent and Surrey. Colonel Battledown, the Peninsular
soldier, owned the adjoining estate in Kent; while the Surrey corner was
occupied, at the epoch of this story, by the Honorable Richard
Pennroyal--he whose father, Lord Epsom, is said to have won ninety
thousand pounds from Fox in a single night's play. The three families had
been on a friendly footing with each other ever since the early part of
the reign of George III.

Sir Clarence had been an ally of the father of the Honorable Richard in
Parliament (they were both Whigs), and Colonel Battledown, though a Tory,
was such capital company as not only to compensate for his political
derelictions, but even to render them a matter for mutual
congratulation--they so enlivened the conversation! In truth, I suppose
the three gentlemen must have had many a boisterous discussion over their
nightly three or four bottles apiece of claret, and after their hard day
across country.

The Honorable Richard, by the by, was by far the youngest of the three; at
the time of Archibald's birth he was not much over twenty; but he had a
cool, strong brain, and quite as much gravity as his seniors, over whom,
in fact, he seems to have exercised a species of ascendency. Possibly he
inherited something of his noble father's ability--that of playing quietly
for big stakes when all the odds were in his favor. At all events, in the
year 1801 he married Miss Jane Malmaison, the baronet's sister, who was
fifteen years older than he, but who brought him fifty thousand pounds--a
not unimportant consideration to him at that time.

Mrs. Pennroyal has one claim upon our notice, and only one; seven years
after her marriage, at the age of forty-two, she completely lost her
memory, and became rather idiotic, and a few years later contrived to fall