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The widow of Colonel Battledown was escorted by Lord Epsom, the Honorable Richard's elder brother, and wore a very splendid pink turban, and red eyes. But all these details, and many more, may be read in the Morning Post of March 7th, 1821, to which I refer the curious. The service commenced.
The Honorable Richard Pennroyal was not the first man who has failed to see whence his greatest danger was to be expected. That piece of news with which Mr. Pennroyal had killed Sir Clarence was no more than the truth. He was the betrothed husband of the beautiful heiress, Miss Battledown; and the three counties, on the whole, approved the match.
Colonel Battledown fought under Wellington against Soult at Orthez; and in a charge of the French cavalry the gallant officer and genial gentleman was cut in the head by a sabre-stroke and ridden down; and when picked up after the battle he was dead.
Don't tell me! there's plenty of 'em, go where you will, and when you start on the grand tour, as you'll be doing one of these days, you'll see for yourself!" Such were the cynical blasphemies which this man was not ashamed to instil into the ear of his young friend; and then he led him away somewhere, still chuckling, and left Miss Battledown to digest her slight the best way she could.
"Well, I should fancy not; but somebody else can." "Somebody else? Who, I'd like to know?" bawled Sir Clarence. "Let me see the scoundrel who'll dare to marry Kate Battledown let me see him!" "I hear you quite plainly, Malmaison; and I wouldn't exert myself so much if I were you you know what the doctor said. As for Miss Battledown, surely she has a right to marry whom she pleases, hasn't she?"
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.
Lady Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name; she gives 5 pounds more a year for the purpose. Governesses shouldn't have too pretty a name; they shouldn't have a nicer name than the family. I suppose you heard from the Desmonds that I did not go back to England with them.
Mention has already been made of little Kate Battledown, the effect of whose society on Archibald had been so strangely ungenial. A year or two after his "awakening" the little maiden was again thrown in his way, and this time with very different results.
It would consolidate two great contiguous estates, and add one considerable fortune to another. There was a rather wide discrepancy in ages, Pennroyal being about forty, while Miss Battledown was only in her nineteenth year; but that mattered little so that they agreed in other respects.
All his ready money was gone, and mortgages began to settle down like birds of ill-omen upon his house and lands. It was at this period that he married Kate Battledown; and with the money that she brought him he began to retrieve his losses, and again the horizon brightened. Alas! the improvement was only temporary. Ill-luck set in once more, and more inveterately than ever.
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