第176章

"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.

"Oh--how are you Jiffin?" cried Afy, loftily, pretending not to have seen him standing there. And she condescended to put the tips of her white gloves into the offered hand, as she coquetted with her handkerchief, her veil, and her ringlets. "I thought you would have shut up your shop to-day, Mr. Jiffin, and taken a holiday."

"Business must be attended to," responded Mr. Jiffin, quite lost in the contemplation of Afy's numerous attractions, unusually conspicuous as they were. "Had I known that you were abroad, Miss Hallijohn, and enjoying a holiday, perhaps I might have done it, too, in the hope of coming across you somewhere or other."

His words were /bona fide/ as his admiration. Afy saw that, so she could afford to treat him rather /de haut en bas/. "And he's as simple as a calf," thought she.

"The greatest pleasure I have in life, Miss Hallijohn, is to see you go by the shop window," continued Mr. Jiffin. "I'm sure it's like as if the sun itself passed."

"Dear me!" bridled Afy, with a simper, "I don't know any good /that/ can do you. You might have seen me go by an hour or two ago--if you had possessed eyes. I was on my way to Miss Carlyle's," she continued, with the air of one who proclaims the fact of a morning call upon a duchess.

"Where /could/ my eyes have been?" exclaimed Mr. Jiffin, in an agony of regret. "In some of those precious butter-tubs, I shouldn't wonder!

We have had a bad lot in, Miss Hallijohn, and I am going to return them!"

"Oh," said Afy, conspicuously resenting the remark. "I don't know anything about that sort of thing. Butter-tubs are beneath me."

"Of course, of course, Miss Hallijohn," deprecated poor Jiffin. "They are very profitable, though, to those who understand the trade."

"What /is/ all that shouting?" cried Afy, alluding to a tremendous noise in the distance, which had continued for some little time.

"It's the voters cheering Mr. Carlyle. I suppose you know that he's elected, Miss Hallijohn?"

"No, I didn't."

"The other was withdrawn by his friends, so they made short work of it, and Mr. Carlyle is our member. God bless him! there's not many like /him/. But, I say, Miss Hallijohn, whatever is it that the other one has done? Murder, they say. I can't make top nor tail of it. Of course we know he was bad enough before."

"Don't ask me," said Afy. "Murder's not a pleasant subject for a lady to discuss. Are all these customers? Dear me, you'll have enough to do to attend to them; your man can't do it all; so I won't stay talking any longer."

With a gracious flourish of her flounces and wave of the handkerchief Afy sailed off. And Mr. Jiffin, when he could withdraw his fascinated eyes from following her, turned into his shop to assist in serving four or five servant girls, who had entered it.

"It wouldn't be such a bad catch, after all," soliloquized Afy, as she and her crinoline swayed along. "Of course I'd never put my nose inside the shop--unless it was to order things like another customer.

The worst is the name. Jiffin, Joe Jiffin. How could I ever bear to be called Mrs. Joe Jiffin! Not but-- Goodness me! what do you want?"

The interruption to Afy's chickens was caused by Mr. Ebenezer James.