When she had closed the door behind her (not with any vulgar bang, but firmly and significantly), the master of the house walked over to a panelled mirror, and inspected himself uncomfortably. It was a piece of ancient glass, purchased from an Italian chapel by some former Cradock Nowell, and bearing a mystic name and fame among the maids who dusted it. By them it was supposed to have a weird prophetic power, partly, no doubt, from its deep dark lustre, and partly because it was circular, and ever so slightly, and quite imperceptibly, concave. As upon so broad a surface no concavity could be, in the early ages of mechanism, made absolutely true—and for that matter it cannot be done _ad unguem_, even now—there were, of course, many founts of error in this Italian mirror. Nevertheless, all young ladies who ever beheld it were charmed with it, so sweetly deeply beautiful, like Galatea watching herself and finding Polypheme over her shoulder, in the glass of the blue Sicilian sea. To this glass Sir Cradock Nowell went to examine his faded eyes, time–worn, trouble–worn, stranded by the ebbing of the brain. He knew too well what Mrs. Corklemore meant by her last thrust; and the word “hallucination” happened, through a great lawsuit then in progress, to be invested with an especial prominence and significance. While he was sadly gazing into the convergence of grey light, and feebly reassuring himself, yet like his image wavering, a heavy step was heard behind him, and beside his flowing silvery locks appeared the close–cropped massive brow and the gloomy eyes of Bull Garnet. CHAPTER XIV. As the brothers confronted one another, the legitimate and the base–born, the man of tact and the man of force, the luxurious and the labourer, strangely unlike in many respects, more strangely alike in others; each felt kindly and tenderly, yet timidly, for the other. The old man thought of the lying wrong inflicted upon the stronger one by their common father; the other felt the worse wrong—if possible—done by himself to his brother. The measure of such things is not for us. God knows, and visits, and forgives them. Even by the failing light—for the sun was westering, and a cloud flowed over him—each could see that the otherʼs face was not as it should be, that the flight of weeks was drawing age on, more than the lapse of years should. “Garnet, you do a great deal too much. I shall recall my urgent request, if you look so harassed and haggard. Take a holiday now for a month, before the midsummer rents fall due. I will try to do without you; though I may want you any day.” “I will do nothing of the sort; work is needful for me—without it I should die. But you also look very unwell. You must not attempt to prescribe for me.” “I have not been happy lately. By–and–by things will be better. What is your impression of Mrs. Nowell Corklemore?” “That she is an arrant hypocrite, unscrupulous, foul, and deadly.”