Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

								

part. Persiflage, I believe, is the word; and I am glad that there
is no English one. It is never graceful in any woman, still less in a
young girl like you. Hilary brought it from Oxford first: and perhaps
he thought it excellent. Lay it aside now, once and for all. It hopes
to seem a clever thing, and it does not even succeed in that.”
At these severe words, spoken with a decided attempt at severity, Alice
fell back, and could only drop her eyes, and wonder what could have
made her father so cross upon his birthday. But, after the smart of the
moment, she began to acknowledge to herself that her father was right,
and she was wrong. This flippant style was foreign to her, and its
charms must be foregone.
“I beg your pardon, father dear,” she said, looking softly up at him;
“I know that I am not clever, and I never meant to seem so.”
“Quite right, Alice; never attempt to do anything impossible.” Saying
this to her, Sir Roland said to himself that, after all, he should like
to know very much where to find any girl half so clever as Lallie, or
any girl even a quarter so good, and so loving, and so beautiful.
“The sun is almost gone behind the curve of the hill, and the scrubby
beech, and the nick cut in the gorsebush. Alice, you know we only see
it for just the Midsummer week like that.”
Alice came, with her eyes already quit of every trace of tears; with
vanity and all petty feelings melting into larger thought. The beauty
of the world would often come around and overcome her, so that she felt
nothing else.
“The sun must always be the same,” Sir Roland said, rather doubtfully,
after waiting for Alice to begin. “No doubt he must always be the
same; but still the great Herschel seems to think that even the sun is
changing. If he is fed by comets (as our old astronomers used to say),
he ought to be doing very well just now. Alice, the sun is above ground
still, for people on the hill-top, and there is the comet already
kindling!”
“Of course he is, papa; he never waits for the sun’s convenience. But
I must not say that--I forgot. There would be no English name for
it--would there now, papa?”
“You little tyrant, what troubles I would inflict upon you if I studied
the stars! But I scarcely know the belt of Orion from the Northern
Crown. Astronomy does not appear to have taken deep root in our family;
but look, there is part of the sun again emerging under Chancton! In
five minutes more he will be quite gone; now is the time for me to read
these queer directions, which contain so poetical an account of you.”
Alice, warned by his former words, and reduced to proper humility, did
not speak while her father opened the small strip of parchment, at
which she had so long been peeping curiously.
“It is written in Latin,” Sir Roland said, “and has been handed from
father to son unsealed, and as you see it, from the time of the prince
till our time.”