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."