Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

								

they meant this--“Knowledge of trouble trebles it.”
“Now best-loved father,” she exclaimed, perceiving that his face was
set to tell her very little, “behold how many helpless ones depend upon
my knowledge of the evils I must shield them from. It is--nay, by your
eyes--it is the little daughter whom you always cherished with such
love and care, who now is the cause of a mind perplexed, as often she
has been to you. Father, let not our affairs lay such burden on your
mind, but spread them out and lighten it. Often, as our saying hath it,
oftentimes the ear of folly is the purse for wisdom’s gems.”
“I hesitate not, I doubt no longer. I do not divide my mind in twain.
The wisdom of them that come after me carries off and transcends mine
own, as a mountain doth a half-peck basket. Wherefore, my daughter,
Artemise, wife of the noble Englishman with whom she ran away from
Caria, and mother of my five grandchildren, she is worthy to know all
that I have learned from heaven; ay, and she shall know it all.”
“Father to me dearest, yes! Oh, how noble and good of you!”
“She shall know all,” continued the prince, with a gaze of ingenuous
confidence, and counting on his fingers slowly; “it may be sooner, or
it may be later; however, I think one may safely promise a brilliant
knowledge of everything in five years after we have completed the
second century from this day. But now the great comet is waiting for
me. Let me have my boots again. Uncouth, barbarous, frightful things!
But in such a country needful.”
His daughter obeyed without a word, and hid her disappointment. “It
is only to wait till to-morrow,” she thought, “and then to fill him a
larger pipe, and coax him a little more perhaps, and pour him more wine
of Burgundy.”
To-morrow never came for him, except in the way the stars come. In the
morning he was missed, and sought for, and found dead and cold at the
end of his longest telescope. In Chanctonbury Ring he died, and must
have known, for at least a moment, that his death was over him; for
among the stars of his jotting-chart was traced, in trembling charcoal,
“Sepeli, ubi cecidi”--“Bury me where I have fallen.”

CHAPTER VIII.
ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST.

Alice Lorraine, with no small excitement, heard from her father’s lips
this story of their common ancestor. Part of it was already known to
her through traditions of the country; but this was the first time the
whole had been put into a connected narrative. She wondered, also, what
her father’s reason could be for thus recounting to her this piece of
family history, which had never been (as she felt quite sure) confided
to her brother Hilary; and, like a young girl, she was saying to
herself as he went on--“Shall I ever be fit to compare with that lovely
Artemise, my ever-so-long-back grandmother, as the village people call