“Well, yes, I do,” replied Afy. “It’s as good to be plain, and then there can be no misapprehension. I’ll shake hands now with you, Jiffin, for the last time; and I am very sorry that we both made such a mistake.”
Poor Jiffin looked at her. His gaze would have melted a heart of stone. “Miss Afy, you can’t mean it! You’d never, sure, crush a fellow in this manner, whose whole soul is yours; who trusted you entirely? There’s not an earthly thing I would not do to please you. You have been the light of my existence.”
“Of course,” returned Afy, with a lofty and indifferent air, as if to be “the light of his existence” was only her due. “But it’s all done and over. It is not at all a settlement that will suit me, you see, Jiffin. A butter and bacon factor is so very—so very—what I have not been accustomed to! And then, those aprons! I never could get reconciled to them.”
“I’ll discard the aprons altogether,” cried he, in a fever. “I’ll get a second shopman, and buy a little gig, and do nothing but drive you out. I’ll do anything if you will but have me still, Miss Afy. I have bought the ring, you know.”
“Your intentions are very kind,” was the distant answer, “but it’s a thing impossible; my mind is fully made up. So farewell for good, Jiffin; and I wish you better luck in your next venture.”
Afy, lifting her capacious dress, for the streets had just been watered, minced off. And Mr. Joe Jiffin, wiping his wet face as he gazed after her, instantly wished that he could be nailed up in one of his pickled pork barrels, and so be out of his misery.
“That’s done with, thank goodness,” soliloquized Afy. “Have him, indeed. After what Richard let out on the trial. As if I should look after anybody less than Dick Hare! I shall get him, too. I always knew Dick Hare loved me above everything on earth; and he does still, or he’d never had said what he did in open court. ‘It’s better to be born lucky than rich.’ Won’t West Lynne envy me! Mrs. Richard Hare of the Grove. Old Hare is on his last legs, and then Dick comes into his own. Mrs. Hare must have her jointure house elsewhere, for we shall want the Grove for ourselves. I wonder if Madame Barbara will condescend to recognize me. And that blessed Corny? I shall be a sort of cousin of Corny’s then. I wonder how much Dick comes into—three or four thousand a year? And to think that I had nearly escaped this by tying myself to that ape of a Jiffin! What sharks do get in our unsuspecting paths in this world!”
On went Afy, through West Lynne, till she arrived close to Mr. Justice Hare’s. Then she paced slowly. It had been a frequent walk of hers since the trial. Luck favored her to-day. As she was passing the gate, young Richard Hare came up from the direction of East Lynne. It was the first time Afy had obtained speech of him.
“Good day, Richard. Why! you were never going to pass an old friend?”
“I have so many friends,” said Richard, “I can scarcely spare time for them individually.”