torn from the book in the middle of the interest--we remain under the spell of the illusion--we recall the scenes--we try to guess what should have been the sequel--we think that no romance ever was so captivating, simply because we were not allowed to conclude it. Well, if, some years afterwards, the romance fall again in our way, and we open at the page where we left off, we cry, in the maturity of our sober judgment, 'Mawkish stuff!--is this the same thing that I once thought so beautiful?--how one's tastes do alter!'"
DARRELL.--"Does it not depend on the age in which one began the romance?"
LIONEL.--"Rather, let me think, sir, upon the real depth of the interest--the true beauty of the--"
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
