The evening began, the Doctor's voice loud above all the rest. Half an hour afterwards, when the air of the room was already heavy with tobacco-smoke, Sir Miles Lackington who usually came with the earliest, arrived, bringing with him a young gentleman of twenty-two years or thereabouts, who was bravely dressed in a crimson coat, lined with white silk: he had also a flowered silk waistcoat, and the hilt of his sword was set with jewels. He was, in fact, one of those gentlemen who were curious to see this jovial priest, self-styled Chaplain of the place where there were so many parsons, who set the laws of the country at defiance with an audacity so splendid. He looked surprised, as if he had not expected so large an assembly. "Follow me, my lord," said the baronet, whose jolly face was already flushed, and his voice already thick with wine. "Come, my lord, let us get nearer the Doctor. Gentlemen, by your leave: will you make place for his lordship? Doctor, this gentleman is none other than the young Lord Chudleigh, who hath heard of your eloquence and your learning, and greatly desires your better acquaintance. Rascal Roger, chairs for my lord and myself!" He pushed his way through the crowd, followed by his guest. The doctor turned his head, half rose; his melancholy mood had passed away: he was in happy vein: he had sung one or two songs in a voice which might have been heard at Temple Bar: he had taken two or three glasses of punch, and smoked a pipe and a half of the best Virginian; he was in the paradise which he loved. Yet when Sir Miles Lackington spoke, when he named his guest, the Doctor's face became suddenly pale, he seemed to totter, his eyes glared, and he caught at the arm of his chair, as if about to be stricken with some kind of fit. His friends, who had never seen those ample and rubicund cheeks other than of a glowing ruddiness, were greatly terrified at this phenomenon. "The Doctor is ill," cried Solomon Stallabras, starting to his feet. "Give air--open the windows--let us carry the Doctor into the street!" But he recovered. "It is nothing," he said. "A sudden faintness. The day has been close. Let no one move." He drank off his glass of punch: the colour came back to his face and the firmness to his legs. "I am well again. Sir Miles, you are always welcome. Were the Liberties peopled with such as you, we should be well sped indeed. Quick with the chairs, Roger. I rejoice to see your lordship in this poor house of mine. Had other noblemen of your lordship's rank but kept their word, I should this day have welcomed you in the palace of a bishop. Forget, my lord, that I am not a bishop: be assured that if I cannot bestow the episcopal absolution and benediction which he of London hath ever ready for a nobleman, my welcome is worthy of a prelate, and the punch not to be surpassed even at Lambeth Palace. Sir Miles, you forgot, I think, to make me acquainted with his lordship's noble name."