“He is a handsome man, after all,” quoth she to Miss Carlyle’s maids, when Sir Francis Levison arrived opposite the house.

“But such a horrid creature!” was the response.  “And to think that he should come here to oppose Mr. Archibald!”

“What’s that?” cried Afy.  “What are they stopping for?  There are two policemen there!  Oh!” shrieked Afy, “if they haven’t put handcuffs on him!  Whatever has he done?  What can he have been up to?”

“Where?  Who?  What?” cried the servants, bewildered with the crowd.  “Put handcuffs on which?”

“Sir Francis Levison.  Hush!  What is that they say?”

Listening, looking, turning from white to red, from red to white, Afy stood.  But she could make nothing of it; she could not divine the cause of the commotion.  The man’s answer to Miss Carlyle and Lady Dobede, clear though it was, did not quite reach her ears.

“What did he say?” she cried.

“Good Heavens!” cried one of the maids, whose hearing had been quicker than Afy’s.  “He says they are arrested for the wilful murder of Hal—–­of your father, Miss Afy!  Sir Francis Levison and Otway Bethel.”

“What!” shrieked Afy, her eyes starting.

“Levison was the man who did it, he says,” continued the servant, bending her ear to listen.  “And young Richard Hare, he says, has been innocent all along.”

Afy slowly gathered in the sense of the words.  She gasped twice, as if her breath had gone, and then, with a stagger and a shiver, fell heavily to the ground.

Afy Hallijohn, recovered from her fainting fit, had to be smuggled out of Miss Carlyle’s, as she had been smuggled in.  She was of an elastic nature, and the shock, or the surprise, or the heat, whatever it may have been, being over, Afy was herself again.

Not very far removed from the residence of Miss Carlyle was a shop in the cheese and ham and butter and bacon line.  A very respectable shop, too, and kept by a very respectable man—­a young man of mild countenance, who had purchased the good-will of the business through an advertisement, and come down from London to take possession.  His predecessor had amassed enough to retire, and people foretold that Mr. Jiffin would do the same.  To say that Miss Carlyle dealt at the shop will be sufficient to proclaim the good quality of the articles kept in it.

When Afy arrived opposite the shop, Mr. Jiffin was sunning himself at the door; his shopman inside being at some urgent employment over the contents of a butter-cask.  Afy stopped.  Mr. Jiffin admired her uncommonly, and she, always ready for anything in that way, had already enjoyed several passing flirtations with him.

“Good day, Miss Hallijohn,” cried he, warmly, tucking up his white apron and pushing it round to the back of his waist, in the best manner he could, as he held out his hand to her.  For Afy had once hinted in terms of disparagement at that very apron.