The devotion of the two to each other grew with their growth. She, even at that early age, must have given occasional foretastes of the wayward, impulsive, and yet calculating character that was developed in her later life; but there can be little doubt that she felt a genuine attachment to Archibald; and he laid himself at her feet with a chivalric single-heartedness more characteristic of the fifteenth century than of the early nineteenth. Indeed, his jealous guardianship of her excited not a little amusement among his seniors; and it is related that in his twelfth year he actually commissioned Colonel Battledown to carry a formal "message" on his behalf to the Honorable Richard Pennroyal; the latter's offence consisting in his having taken Miss Battledown on his knee and kissed her. The matter was, however, happily arranged on the Hon. gentleman's expressing his regret for his indiscretion, and the Colonel and Sir Clarence becoming answerable for his good behavior in future. But the children's preference for each other now began to suggest other thoughts than those of mere passing entertainment to the paternal minds. There seemed to be no good reason why they should not ultimately make a match of it. It was true that Kate might well expect to find a more brilliant mate than the second son of a baronet; but, personal feeling and the friendship of the families aside, she might do much worse than with Archibald. The second son of Sir Clarence stood a fair chance of hereafter making a favorable entry into politics; and as for fortune, his aunt on the mother's side, a Miss Tremont, of Cornwall, an old maid without nearer relatives than her nephew, was in a fair way to bequeath him seventy thousand pounds. And furthermore (this was an aspect of the case which Colonel Battledown probably kept to himself), it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Archibald might finally inherit Malmaison in spite of the accident of his birth. Edward Malmaison had always been a delicate child, and years were not making him stronger. He was very studious, and disinclined to those active exercises in which his brother was already beginning to excel: his eyes were weak and his cheeks pale; and in short, unless his constitution should presently undergo a favorable change, the chances were fairly against his surviving Archibald, to say the least of it. "Archie thrashed him at fisticuffs," said the old man of war to himself, "and why shouldn't he get the better of him in other ways as well? Of course we wish no harm to happen to poor Edward, who is a good little snipe enough; but one must conduct one's campaign to an eye to what may happen, as well as to what is."