Afy started like anybody moonstruck.

“When you quitted this place, after the tragedy, it was to join Captain Thorn in London.  How long, I ask, did you remain with him?”

Entirely a random shaft, this.  But Richard had totally denied to Lawyer Ball the popular assumption that Afy had been with him.

“Who says I was with him?  Who says I went after him?” flashed Afy, with scarlet cheeks.

“I do,” replied Lawyer Ball, taking notes of her confusion.  “Come, it’s over and done with—­it’s of no use to deny it now.  We all go upon visits to friends sometimes.”

“I never heard anything so bold!” cried Afy.  “Where will you tell me I went next?”

“You are upon your oath, woman!” again interposed Justice Hare, and a trembling, as of agitation, might be detected in his voice, in spite of its ringing severity.  “Were you with the prisoner Levison, or were you with Richard Hare?”

“I with Richard Hare!” cried Afy, agitated in her turn, and shaking like an aspen-leaf, partly with discomfiture, partly with unknown dread.  “How dare that cruel falsehood be brought up again, to my face?  I never saw Richard Hare after the night of the murder.  I swear it.  I swear that I never saw him since.  Visit him!  I’d sooner visit Calcraft, the hangman.”

There was truth in the words—­in the tone.  The chairman let fall the hand which had been raised to his face, holding on his eye-glasses; and a sort of self-condemning fear arose, confusing his brain.  His son, proved innocent of one part, might be proved innocent of the other; and then—­how would his own harsh conduct show out!  West Lynne, in its charity, the justice in his, had cast more odium to Richard, with regard to his after conduct touching this girl, than it had on the score of the murder.

“Come,” said Lawyer Ball, in a coaxing tone, “let us be pleasant.  Of course you were not with Richard Hare—­West Lynne is always ill-natured—­you were on a visit to Captain Thorn, as—­as any other young lady might be?”

Afy hung her head, cowed down to abject meekness.

“Answer the question,” came forth the chairman’s voice again. “Were you with Thorn?”

“Yes,” though the answer was feeble enough.

Mr. Ball coughed an insinuating cough.

“Did you remain with him—­say two or three years?”

“Not three.”

“A little over two, perhaps?”

“There was no harm in it,” shrieked Afy, with a catching sob of temper.  “If I chose to live in London, and he chose to make a morning call upon me, now and then, as an old friend, what’s that to anybody?  Where was the harm, I ask?”

“Certainly—­where was the harm? I am not insinuating any,” returned Lawyer Ball, with a wink of the eye furthest from the witness and the bench.  “And, during the time that—­that he was making these little morning calls upon you, did you know him to be Levison?”