Mr. Peacocke had gone to St. Louis and become Vice-President of the College at Missouri, where he had met Mrs. Ferdinand Lefroy, whose appearance--dark brown complexion, with hair dark and very glossy, "tall for a woman, but without any of that look of length under which female altitude sometimes suffers"--suggests that she must have been a Creole, even though she was the daughter of a Louisiana planter ruined by the Civil War. Colonel Ferdinand Lefroy had gone to Mexico to seek his fortune, was reported to have been killed there, and Mrs. Lefroy had then married Mr. Peacocke. When her supposedly dead husband reappeared and again disappeared, Mr. Peacocke and Mrs. Lefroy went to England as man and wife. So here is a secret in an unstable state. The Peacockes' behavior is so guarded--they accept no invitations, say nothing of their history--that a secret is suspected, and when Ferdinand Lefroy's brother suddenly appears and attempts to blackmail the Peacockes, the fat is in the fire. Dr. Wortle remains loyal to his faithful usher, but the hounds of gossip are hot on the scent, and a number of students are withdrawn from the school, threatening its viability. The unkindest cut of all is a paragraph in a London gossip sheet, "Everybody's Business," alluding to Dr. Wortle's visits to Mrs. Peacocke in the absence of her husband, who has gone to America to seek out the truth about the status, living or dead, of Ferdinand Lefroy. "It must be admitted," said the writer, "that the Doctor has the best of it. While one gentleman is gouging the other--as cannot but be expected--the Doctor will be at any rate in security, enjoying the smiles of beauty under his own fig-tree at Bowick. After a hot morning with "τυπτω" [3] in the school, there will be "amo" in the cool of the evening." [Footnote 3: Τυπτω--to "thump", that is, cudgel or pummel by repeated blows; by implication to punish] How to respond? Here is the crux of the story. There are, to be sure, interviews between Dr. Wortle and his bishop, and Dr. Wortle seriously contemplates a suit for libel against the gossip sheet, which will bring the bishop into court. But perhaps the most pertinent interviews are those between Dr. Wortle and the colleague whom he selects as his confidante and advisor, Mr. Puddicombe, rector of a neighboring parish. Mr. Puddicombe effectively plays the role of Jiminy Cricket, the conscience of Dr. Wortle. In Chapter XIII, "Mr. Puddicombe's Boot," Dr. Wortle first goes to Mr. Puddicombe with his resolution to reply to the "Broughton Gazette," which has written, "Parents, if they feel themselves to be aggrieved, can remedy the evil by withdrawing their sons." Mr. Puddicombe tells Dr. Wortle that he has fallen into a misfortune and advises restraint: