ize, and I had
barely time to appreciate even its main features when I knew that I had
before me the painted counterfeit of my brother's vision. The discovery
caused me a violent shock, and it was with an infinite repulsion that
I recognised at once the features and dress of the man whom John had
seen rising from the chair at Oxford. So accurately had my brother's
imagination described him to me, that it seemed as if I had myself seen
him often before. I noted each feature, comparing them with my brother's
description, and finding them all familiar and corresponding exactly.
He was a man still in the prime of life. His features were regular and
beautifully modelled; yet there was something in his face that inspired
me with a deep aversion, though his brown eyes were open and brilliant.
His mouth was sharply cut, with a slight sneer on the lips, and his
complexion of that extreme pallor which had impressed itself deeply on
my brother's imagination and my own.

After the first intense surprise had somewhat subsided, I experienced
a feeling of great relief, for here was an extraordinary explanation
of my brother's vision of last night. It was certain that the flash
of lightning had lit up this ill-starred picture, and that to his
predisposed fancy the painted figure had stood forth as an actual
embodiment. That such an incident, however startling, should have been
able to fling John into a brain-fever, showed that he must already have
been in a very low and reduced state, on which excitement would act much
more powerfully than on a more robust condition of health. A similar
state of weakness, perturbed by the excitement of his passion for
Constance Temple, might surely also have conjured up the vision which
he thought he saw the night of our leaving Oxford in the summer.
These thoughts, my dear Edward, gave me great relief; for it seemed
a comparatively trivial matter that my brother should be ill, even
seriously ill, if only his physical indisposition could explain away the
supernatural dread which had haunted us for the past six months. The
clouds were breaking up. It was evident that John had been seriously
unwell for some months; his physical weakness had acted on his brain;
and I had lent colour to his wandering fancies by being alarmed by them,
instead of rejecting them at once or gently laughing them away as I
should have done. But these glad thoughts took me too far, and I was
suddenly brought up by a reflection th