d
about his head by the angry 'link-man.'

These strange occurrences helped, I think, just then to make me nervous,
and prepared the way for the odd sort of ascendency which, through my
sense of the mysterious and super-natural, that repulsive Frenchwoman was
gradually, and it seemed without effort, establishing over me.

Some dark points of her character speedily emerged from the prismatic mist
with which she had enveloped it.

Mrs. Rusk's observation about the agreeability of new-comers I found to be
true; for as Madame began to lose that character, her good-humour abated
very perceptibly, and she began to show gleams of another sort of temper,
that was lurid and dangerous.

Notwithstanding this, she was in the habit of always having her Bible open
by her, and was austerely attentive at morning and evening services, and
asked my father, with great humility, to lend her some translations of
Swedenborg's books, which she laid much to heart.

When we went out for our walk, if the weather were bad we generally made
our promenade up and down the broad terrace in front of the windows. Sullen
and malign at times she used to look, and as suddenly she would pat me on
the shoulder caressingly, and smile with a grotesque benignity, asking
tenderly, 'Are you fatigue, ma chere?' or 'Are you cold-a, dear Maud?'

At first these abrupt transitions puzzled me, sometimes half frightened
me, savouring, I fancied, of insanity. The key, however, was accidentally
supplied, and I found that these accesses of demonstrative affection were
sure to supervene whenever my father's face was visible through the library
windows.

I did not know well what to make of this woman, whom I feared with a vein
of superstitious dread. I hated being alone with her after dusk in the
school-room. She would sometimes sit for half an hour at a time, with her
wide mouth drawn down at the corners, and a scowl, looking into the fire.
If she saw me looking at her, she would change all this on the instant,
affect a sort of languor, and lean her head upon her hand, and ultimately
have recourse to her Bible. But I fancied she did not read, but pursued her
own dark ruminations, for I observed that the open book might often lie for
half an hour or more under her eyes and yet the leaf never turned.

I should have been glad to be assured that she prayed when on her knees, or
read when that book was before her; I should have felt that she was more
canny and human. As