VANCE (interrupting).—" Heroine?—Not at all, Lionel. I once fell in love—incredible as it may seem to you—nine years ago last January. I was too poor then to aspire to any young lady's hand—therefore I did not tell my love, but 'let concealment,' et cetera, et cetera. She went away with her mamma to complete her education on the Continent. I remained 'Patience on a monument.' She was always before my eyes—the slenderest, shyest creature just eighteen. I never had an idea that she could grow any older, less slender, or less shy. Well, four years afterwards (just before we made our excursion into Surrey, Lionel), she returned to England, still unmarried. I went to a party at which I knew she was to be-saw her, and was cured."
"Bad case of small-pox, or what?" asked the Colonel, smiling.
VANCE—"Nay; everybody said she was extremely improved—that was the mischief—she had improved herself out of my fancy. I had been faithful as wax to one settled impression, and when I saw a fine, full-formed, young Frenchified lady, quite at her ease, armed with eyeglass and bouquet and bustle, away went my dream of the slim blushing maiden. The Colonel is quite right, Lionel; the romance once suspended, 'tis a haunting remembrance till thrown again in our way, but complete disillusion if we try to renew it; though I swear that in my case the interest was deep, and the heroine improved in her beauty. So with you and that dear little creature. See her again, and you'll tease, me no more to give you that portrait of Titania at watch over Bottom's soft slumbers. All a Midsummer Night's Dream, Lionel. Titania fades back into the arms of Oberon, and would not be Titania if you could make her- Mrs. Bottom."
CHAPTER XV.
EVEN COLONEL MORLEY, (KNOWING EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING), IS PUZZLED WHEN IT COMES TO THE PLAIN QUESTION—"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"
"I am delighted with Vance," said Darrell, when he and the Colonel were again walking arm-in-arm. "His is not one of those meagre intellects which have nothing to spare out of the professional line. He has humour. Humour—strength's rich superfluity."
"I like your definition," said the Colonel. "And humour in Vance, though fantastic, is not without subtlety. There was much real kindness in his obvious design to quiz Lionel out of that silly enthusiasm for—"
"For a pretty child, reared up to be a strolling player," interrupted Darrell. "Don't call it silly enthusiasm. I call it chivalrous compassion. Were it other than compassion, it would not be enthusiasm— it would be degradation. But do you believe, then, that Vance's confession of first love, and its cure, was but a whimsical invention?"
COLONEL MORLEY.—"Not so. Many a grave truth is spoken jestingly. I have no doubt that, allowing for the pardonable exaggeration of a /raconteur/, Vance was narrating an episode in his own life."
DARRELL.—"Do you think that a grown man, who has ever really felt love, can make a jest of it, and to mere acquaintances?"