Clifford is a wasted, gray, and melancholy figure, and yet his eyes seem to be trying to light the dark corners of the old Pyncheon mansion. Clifford is a man of delicate and exquisite taste, a sybarite who can be satisfied only by harmonious and modulated effects (somewhat like Roderick in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"). Note that Clifford's dressing gown is the same one which he had worn for the youthful portrait which Phoebe has already seen. It is now an old and faded garment, and it is thus a fitting emblem for its wearer and a symbol for the entire Pyncheon family. Two images that appeared earlier in the novel also function in the same way that the gown does: (1) the carpet on the floor in the Colonel's room, where Clifford now resides, was a carpet originally of rich texture; now, it has become worn and faded in these latter years; and (2) the china tea set with its "world of vivid brilliancy [is] . . . still unfaded" because it was brought into the family by one of the Colonel's wives (not a Pyncheon), a Miss Davenport, who was Phoebe's great-great-great-great-grandmother.
Judge Pyncheon is a combination of excessive and jarring contrasts. Phoebe realizes that the Judge is very much like the original of Holgrave's photograph and that the hard, stern, relentless look now on his face is the same one that the sun "had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out." Recovering his poise after Phoebe withdrew from his attempted kiss, the Judge beams upon Phoebe once more and she finds herself quite overpowered by his warm, hypocritical smile. Hawthorne re-emphasizes his point with a metaphor that seems almost as if it were from a bestiary. He says that the Judge is "very much like a serpent [that] . . . fills the air with his peculiar odor."
Confronting the formidable Judge herself, poor Hepzibah is transformed by fear. She looks like a dragon; in fact, she takes on the true aspect of Judge Pyncheon, which he, in turn, conceals with a warm, broad smile. The Judge's true nature, however, is made evident very shortly. At the sound of Clifford's voice, he becomes a "beast of prey." Hawthorne's words are harsh. He gives us a portrait of a family member who would prey upon another family member, one who has in fact already preyed upon his other family members. But this passage also points to another thing: the fire in the Judge's eyes is obviously equated with the hearth in the House of the Seven Gables, tying him to its fate. We have also seen in this chapter that Hepzibah can at least appear as fierce as the Judge.
