There was scarcely half-an-hour in the day during which the honest maids and their worthy little mistress did not discuss the dreadful Mary Matchwell.

They were one and all, though in different degrees, indescribably afraid of her.

Her necromantic pretensions gave an indistinctness and poignancy to their horror.

She seemed to know, by a diabolical intuition, what everybody was about--she was so noiseless and stealthy, and always at your elbow when you least expected.

Those large dismal eyes of hers, they said, glared green in the dark like a cat's; her voice was sometimes so coarse and deep, and her strength so unnatural, that they were often on the point of believing her to be a man in disguise.