Now, it was touching this very family that the scandal had arisen. How it arose was the puzzle; since the ladies themselves never spoke to anybody, and Dr. West would not be likely to invent or to spread stories affecting himself.  Its precise nature was buried in uncertainty, also its precise object.  Some said one thing, some another.  The scandal, on the whole, tended to the point that Dr. West had misbehaved himself.  In what way?  What had he done?  Had he personally ill-treated them—­sworn at them—­done anything else unbecoming a gentleman?  And which had been the sufferer?  The old lady in her widow’s cap? or the sickly daughter? or the other one?  Could he have carelessly supplied wrong medicine; sent to them some arsenic instead of Epsom Salts, and so thrown them into fright, and danger, and anger?  Had he scaled the privet hedge in the night, and robbed the garden of its cabbages?  What, in short, was it that he had done?  Deerham spoke out pretty broadly, as to the main facts, although the rumoured details were varied and obscure.  It declared that some of Dr. West’s doings at Chalk Cottage had not been orthodox, and that discovery had followed.

There are two classes of professional men upon whom not a taint should rest; who ought, in familiar phrase, to keep their hands clean—­the parson of the parish, and the family doctor.  Other people may dye themselves in Warren’s jet if they like; but let as much as a spot get on him who stands in the pulpit to preach to us, or on him who is admitted to familiar intercourse with our wives and children, and the spot grows into a dark thundercloud.  What’s the old saying?  “One man may walk in at the gate, while another must not look over the hedge.”  It runs something after that fashion.  Had Dr. West not been a family doctor, the scandal might have been allowed to die out:  as it was, Deerham kept up the ball, and rolled it.  The chief motive for this, the one that influenced Deerham above all others, was unsatisfied curiosity.  Could Deerham have gratified this to the full, it would have been content to subside into quietness.

Whether it was true, or whether it was false, there was no denying that it had happened at an unfortunate moment for Dr. West.  A man always in debt—­and what he did with his money Deerham could not make out, for his practice was a lucrative one—­he had latterly become actually embarrassed.  Deerham was good-natured enough to say that a handsome sum had found its way to Chalk Cottage, in the shape of silence-money, or something of the sort; but Deerham did not know.  Dr. West was at his wits’ end where to turn to for a shilling—­had been so, for some weeks past; so that he had no particular need of anything worse coming down upon him.  Perhaps what gave a greater colour to the scandal than anything else was the fact that, simultaneously with its rise, Dr. West’s visits to Chalk Cottage had suddenly ceased.