Then, like a triumphant pugilist, metaphorically he stood over her and asked her if she wanted any more.
For a little while Madame Riennes was crushed, also very evidently frightened, for those who deal in the supernatural are afraid of the supernatural.

Indeed, none of us welcome the curse even of a malignant and disappointed beggar, or of the venomous gipsy angered by this or that, and much less that of a righteous man inspired by just and holy indignation.

Madame Riennes, an expert in the trade, a dealer in maledictions, was not exempt from this common prejudice.

As she would have expressed it, she felt that he had the Power on his side.
But Madame was no common charlatan; she had strength of a sort, though where it came from who could say?
Moreover, for all kinds of secret reasons of her own, she desired to keep in her grip this boy Godfrey, who had shown himself to be so wonderful a medium or clairvoyant.

To her he meant strength and fortune; also for him she had conceived some kind of unholy liking in the recesses of her dark soul.