It was in a peculiar degree the age of superstition; and the terrible influence of the Evil Eye was one not only of the commonest, but the most formidable of them all.

The dark, significant, but sinister gaze of Harry Woodward was, she thought, forever upon her.

She could not withdraw her imagination from it.

It haunted her; it was fixed upon her, accompanied by a dreadful smile of apparent courtesy, but of a malignity which she felt as if it penetrated her whole being, both corporeal and mental.

She hurried to bed at night with a hope that sleep might exclude the frightful vision which followed her; but, alas! even sleep was no security to her against its terrors.
It was now that in her distempered dreams imagination ran riot.