No doubt the link was waved 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.