The artless disclosure startled her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that ghastly night returned with double vividness to her mind.
'O, can it be,' she said to herself, when her visitor had departed, 'that I exercise a malignant power over people against my own will ?' She knew that she had been slily called a witch since her fall; but never having understood why that particular stigma had been attached to her, it had passed disregarded.

Could this be the explanation, and had such things as this ever happened before?
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