“Here’s a cool corner, a pleasant sofa, you can have it all to yourself. What an honour to receive you under my roof, and on this interesting occasion! Yes, as you say, there are great changes in L---- since you left us. Society has much improved. I must look about and find some persons to introduce to you. Clever! oh, I know your tastes. We have a wonderful man,--a new doctor. Carries all before him; very high character, too; good old family, greatly looked up to, even apart from his profession. Dogmatic a little,--a Sir Oracle,--‘Lets no dog bark;’ you remember the quotation,--Shakspeare. Where on earth is he? My dear Sir Philip, I am sure you would enjoy his conversation.” Sir Philip! Could it be Sir Philip Derval to whom the mayor was giving a flattering yet scarcely propitiatory description of myself? Curiosity combined with a sense of propriety in not keeping myself an unsuspected listener; I emerged from the curtain, but silently, and reached the centre of the room before the mayor perceived me. He then came up to me eagerly, linked his arm in mine, and leading me to a gentleman seated on a sofa, close by the window I had quitted, said,-- “Doctor, I must present you to Sir Philip Derval, just returned to England, and not six hours in L----. If you would like to see the museum again, Sir Philip, the doctor, I am sure, will accompany you.” “No, I thank you; it is painful to me at present to see, even under your roof, the collection which my poor dear friend, Dr. Lloyd, was so proudly beginning to form when I left these parts.” “Ay, Sir Philip, Dr. Lloyd was a worthy man in his way, but sadly duped in his latter years; took to mesmerism, only think! But our young doctor here showed him up, I can tell you.” Sir Philip, who had acknowledged my first introduction to his acquaintance by the quiet courtesy with which a well-bred man goes through a ceremony that custom enables him to endure with equal ease and indifference, now evinced by a slight change of manner how little the mayor’s reference to my dispute with Dr. Lloyd advanced me in his good opinion. He turned away with a bow more formal than his first one, and said calmly, “I regret to hear that a man so simple-minded and so sensitive as Dr. Lloyd should have provoked an encounter in which I can well conceive him to have been worsted. With your leave, Mr. Mayor, I will look into your ballroom. I may perhaps find there some old acquaintances.” He walked towards the dancers, and the mayor, linking his arm in mine, followed close behind, saying in his loud hearty tones,-- “Come along, you too, Dr. Fenwick, my girls are there; you have not spoken to them yet.” Sir Philip, who was then half way across the room, turned round abruptly, and, looking me full in the face, said,-- “Fenwick, is your name Fenwick,--Allen Fenwick?” “That is my name, Sir Philip.”