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?"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"Yes; if he be so thoroughly cured, that he has made a
jest of it to himself. And the more lightly he speaks of it, perhaps
the more solemnly at one time he felt it. Levity is his revenge on the
passion that fooled him."

DARRELL.--"You are evidently an experienced philosopher in the lore of
such folly. '_Consultas insapientis sapientiae_.' Yet I can scarcely
believe that you have ever been in love."

"Yes, I have," said the Colonel bluntly, "and very often! Everybody
at my age has--except yourself. So like a man's observation, that,"