"Your wife?" rejoined Mr. Carlyle, with some emphasis.

Richard looked surprised. "Why, you don't suppose I meant anything else!
I wouldn't have been such a blackguard."

"Well, go on, Richard. Did she return your love?"

"I can't be certain. Sometimes I thought she did, sometimes not; she
used to play and shuffle, and she liked too much to be with--him. I
would think her capricious--telling me I must not come this evening, and
I must not come the other; but I found out they were the evenings when
she was expecting him. We were never there together."

"You forget that you have not indicted 'him' by any name, Richard. I am
at fault."

Richard Hare bent forward till his black whiskers brushed Mr. Carlyle's
shoulder. "It was that cursed Thorn."

Mr. Carlyle remembered the name Barbara had mentioned. "Who was Thorn? I
never heard of him."

"Neither had anybody else, I expect, in West Lynne. He took precious
good care of that. He lives some miles away, and used to come over in
secret."

"Courting Afy?"

"Yes, he did come courting her," returned Richard, in a savage tone.