In a few minutes Bromley had lifted Constance into her carriage, and, with Florence and Lady Coxe, was driving towards London. The skirts had much contracted for the occasion. “Did ’e tell any one but you?” asked Lady Coxe, in an anxious whisper. “No one.” “Then, for ’eaven’s sake, don’t breathe it to Sir Joshphat, and take the carriage on for Dr Leadbitter.” Bromley bowed reassuringly, and hurried on, in the family coach, to Bedford Square. Dr Leadbitter was at home, and Constance was raving in a fever. CHAPTER XIV. There is a wonderful inclination to practical paradox in the human mind. If a man be dull, the world charitably sets him down as sound. If he be clever, the world, with equal charity, sets him down as unscrupulous. If a man be courteous, he is instantly condemned as designing; if brutal, lauded as straightforward. But if this natural impulse to moral compensation be the general bias of the human intellect, it assumes twofold force in the special case of medical men. Perhaps with such men personal characteristics are more prominently displayed; perhaps the confidence of the patient reposing in the individuality of his advisers gives a factitious importance to minor peculiarities. Be it how it may, you have never yet seen an Asclepiad whose manners were not, in some respect, different from those of his fellow-creatures. Great or small, clever or stupid, he has managed to inspire confidence, or to impose successfully on some circle of patients, however contracted. Amongst these he is an authority. His individual influence is so great, that but little trust is reposed in his art when practised by another. If in large practice, his patients consider him deserving of it; if in small practice, they esteem him an ill-used man. He is their guide and their friend as well as their philosopher; godfather to their children, trustee to their settlements, legatee to their wills. He is present at their _births_ and deaths, generally at their weddings. He knows their pecuniary difficulties, their family quarrels; the husband’s distrust, or the wife’s jealousy; the son’s folly, and the daughter’s infatuation. He can go down the street and schedule out each house as to its specific non-observance of the decalogue. He can tell you who steals, who commits murder, or who commits any other sin of the first magnitude. There are thousands of little secrets confided to the diary of a physician; thousands of fees to his pocket, for little occurrences which, like the fees, go no further than himself. By the highest he is treated almost as an equal; by the wisest he is respected as a man of science and of power. If not profoundly versed in our constitution, he knows us in our moments of weakness, and that knowledge alone makes him the master of most of us. But before we admit him to this position, we minutely examine his qualities, or accept the judgment of them passed by the universal suffrage of mortal men.